GOLTURE  ep  ETHNOLOGY 


ROBER 


/)V\'IE 


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CULTURE  OP  ETHNOLOGY 


CULTURE  (S^  ETHNOLOGY 

BY 

Robert  H.  Lowie,  Ph.D. 

Associate  Curator,  Anthropology 
American  Museum  of  Natural  History 


NEW  YORK 

DOUGLAS  C.  McMURTRIE 

I917 


stacK 
Annex 

CB 
LI  5c. 

m 

CONTENTS 


I.  Culture  and  Psychology 

II.  Culture  and  Race 

III.  Culture  and  Environment 

IV.  The  Determinants  of  Culture 

V.  Terms  of  Relationship 


Page 

5 

27 

47 
66 
98 


PREFACE 

This  booklet  is  an  attempt  at  popularization. 
The  first  four  chapters  are  practically  identical 
with  as  many  lectures,  delivered  in  191 7  as 
the  January  course  offered  by  the  Department 
of  Anthropology  of  the  American  Museum  of 
Natural  History.  The  purpose  of  the  January 
series,  which  was  instituted  in  1914  by  Dr. 
P.  E.  Goddard  and  the  writer,  is  to  acquaint 
an  audience  of  intelligent  laymen  with  some  of 
the  results  of  modern  ethnological  work,  the 
emphasis  being  on  principles  and  problems, 
rather  than  on  purely  descriptive  detail.  The 
course,  in  short,  occupies  an  intermediate  po- 
sition between  technical  discourses  addressed 
to  scientists  and  the  more  popular  lectures 
which  are  designed  to  furnish  mainly  entertain- 
ment. Each  year  different  topics  have  been 
chosen  and  several  members  of  the  staff  have 
cooperated.  Owing  to  the  dearth  of  recent 
ethnological  literature  reflecting  the  position  of 
American  field-workers,  and  at  the  same  time 
accessible  to  the  interested  outsider,  I  was 
easily  persuaded  to  issue  the  191 7  lectures  in 
the  present  form. 


PREFACE 

The  last  chapter  may  not  seem  to  fit  within 
the  scope  of  this  publication.  It  is  obviously 
more  technical  than  the  rest  in  treatment  and 
may  appear  to  deal  with  too  special  a  topic. 
My  object,  however,  was  to  conclude  with  a 
concrete  illustration  of  ethnological  method,  and 
I  naturally  selected  a  subject  to  which  I  had 
paid  considerable  attention  during  the  last  two 
years.  It  is  a  subject  in  which  Morgan  was  able 
to  arouse  the  interest  of  hundreds  of  laymen; 
and  I  can  see  no  reason  why  an  up-to-date 
exposition  of  the  problems  involved  should  not 
be  able  to  hold  their  attention. 

Robert  H.  Lowie 

May,  191 7 


I.  CULTURE  AND  PSYCHOLOGY^ 

With  the  beginning  of  the  European  war  the 
word  'culture'  acquired  a  sense  in  popular  English 
usage  which  had  long  prevailed  in  ethnological 
literature.  Culture  is,  indeed,  the  sole  and  ex- 
clusive subject-matter  of  ethnology,  as  conscious- 
ness is  the  subject-matter  of  psychology,  life 
of  biology,  electricity  of  a  branch  of  physics. 
Culture  shares  with  these  other  fundamental 
concepts  the  peculiarity  that  it  can  be  prop- 
erly understood  only  by  an  enlarged  familiarity 
with  the  facts  it  summarizes.  There  is  no  royal 
shortcut  to  a  comprehension  of  culture  as  a 
whole  by  definition  any  more  than  to  a  compre- 
hension of  consciousness;  but  as  every  analysis 
and  explanation  of  particular  conscious  states 
adds  to  our  knowledge  of  what  consciousness 
is,  so  every  explanation  of  particular  cultural 
phenomena  adds  to  our  insight  into  the  nature 
of  culture.  We  must,  however,  start  with 
some  proximate  notion  of  what  we  are  to 
discuss,  and  for  this  purpose  Tylor's  definition 
in  the  opening  sentence  of  his  Primitive  Culture 
will  do  as  well  as  any:  "Culture  ...  is  that 
complex  whole  which  includes  knowledge,  belief, 
art,  morals,  law,  custom,  and  any  other  capa- 
[51 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

bilities  and  habits  acquired  by  man  as  a  member 
of  society." 

For  purely  practical  reasons,  connected  with 
the  minute  division  of  labor  that  has  become 
imperative  with  modern  specialization,  ethnology 
has  in  practice  concerned  itself  with  the  cruder 
cultures  of  peoples  without  a  knowledge  of  writ- 
ing. But  this  division  is  an  illogical  and  artificial 
one.  As  the  biologist  can  study  life  as  manifested 
in  the  human  organism  as  well  as  in  the  amoeba, 
so  the  ethnologist  might  examine  and  describe 
the  usages  of  modern  America  as  well  as  those  of 
the  Hopi  Indians,  In  these  lectures  I  shall  there- 
fore not  hesitate  to  draw  upon  illustrations  from 
the  higher  civilizations  where  these  seem  most 
appropriate. 

Indeed,  it  may  be  best  for  pedagogical  reasons 
to  commence  with  an  enumeration  of  instances  of 
cultural  activity  in  our  own  midst.  And  since 
there  is  a  persistent  tendency  to  associate  with 
culture  the  more  impressive  phenomena  of  art, 
science,  and  technology,  it  is  well  to  insist  at  the 
outset  that  these  loftier  phases  are  by  no  means 
necessary  to  the  concept  of  culture.  The  fact 
that  your  boy  plays  'button,  button,  who  has  the 
button?'  is  just  as  much  an  element  of  our  cul- 
ture as  the  fact  that  a  room  is  lighted  by  elec- 
tricity. So  is  the  baseball  enthusiasm  of  our 
[6] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

grown-up  population,  so  are  moving  picture 
shows,  this  dansants,  Thanksgiving  Day  mas- 
querades, bar-rooms,  Ziegfeld  Midnight  FolHes, 
evening  schools,  the  Hearst  papers,  woman 
suffrage  clubs,  the  single-tax  movement,  Riker 
drug  stores,  touring-sedans,  and  Tammany 
Hall. 

These,  then,  represent  the  type  of  phenomena 
comprised  under  the  caption  of  culture.  They 
exist,  and  science,  as  a  complete  view  of  reality, 
cannot  ignore  them.  But  a  question  ominous  for 
the  worker  who  derives  his  bread  and  butter  from 
ethnological  investigation  arises.  All  the  phe- 
nomena mentioned  and  the  rest  of  the  same  order 
relate  to  man,  and  they  relate  to  man  not  as  an 
animal  but  as  an  organism  endowed  with  a  higher 
mentality.  Tylor's  definition  expressly  speaks  of 
'capabilities  and  habits'.  But  there  is  a  science 
that  deals  with  capabilities  and  habits,  to  wit, 
psychology.  Is  it,  then,  necessary  to  have  a  dis- 
tinct branch  of  knowledge,  or  can  we  not  simply 
merge  the  cultural  phenomena  in  those  of  the 
older  science  of  psychology?  It  is  this  question 
that  concerns  us  here.  On  the  answer  must  de- 
pend our  conception  of  culture  and  our  attitude 
towards  a  science  purporting  to  deal  with  cul- 
tural phenomena  as  something  distinct  from 
other  data  of  reality. 

[7] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

In  seeking  light  on  this  subject  we  must  under- 
stand what  sort  of  problems  arise  from  the  con- 
templation of  cultural  facts  and  attempt  to  con- 
nect them  with  the  established  principles  of 
psychology.  A  few  concrete  examples  will  illus- 
trate the  situation. 

One  of  the  striking  characteristics  of  our 
civilization,  a  trait  of  our  material  culture 
that  is  nevertheless  an  invaluable,  nay  in- 
dispensable, means  for  the  propagation  of 
knowledge  under  modern  conditions,  is  the 
existence  of  paper,  that  is,  of  a  cheap,  readily 
manufactured  material  for  writing  and  printing. 
The  obvious  problem  that  develops  from  this 
fact  is.  How  did  we  get  the  art  of  paper- 
manufacture?  Now  we  shall  search  in  vain 
our  psychological  literature  in  quest  of  an  ex- 
planation. Hoffding  and  James,  Wundt  and 
Titchener  have  no  answer  to  offer.  An  answer, 
nevertheless,  exists.  Europe  learnt  the  art 
of  paper-making  from  the  Arabs,  who  as  early  as 
795  A.D.  had  established  a  paper  factory  in 
Bagdad.  These  in  turn  got  their  knowledge  from 
the  Chinese,  who  must  be  regarded  as  the  origi- 
nators of  the  technique.  The  answer  is  a  per- 
fectly satisfactory  one,  but  it  is  obviously  not 
couched  in  psychological  terms:  its  nature  is 
purely  historical. 

181 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

Nevertheless,  an  objection  may  plausibly  be 
raised  here.  Though  an  explanation  has  cer- 
tainly been  given,  it  does  not  account  for  all  as- 
pects of  the  phenomena  we  are  considering. 
There  is  a  psychological  basis  for  each  and  every 
one  of  the  events  in  our  historical  series.  This 
series  we  may  subdivide  into  three  stages — the  in- 
vention by  the  Chinese,  the  borrowing  of  this  inven- 
tion by  the  Arabs,  and  its  transmission  from  Arab 
to  European.  Now  the  two  last-named  processes 
of  transmission  may  not  suggest  the  necessity  of 
a  special  explanation  at  all.  One  may  think  that 
all  that  was  required  was  for  the  Europeans  to 
watch  the  Arabs  and  for  the  Arabs  to  watch  the 
Chinese,  and  presto!  the  thing  was  done.  This 
indeed,  seems  to  be  the  view  of  an  influential 
school  of  modern  ethnologists.  But  the  case  is 
far  from  being  so  simple.  We  know  of  many 
instances,  in  the  higher  no  less  than  in  the  lower 
cultures,  corresponding  to  what  the  biologist 
calls  symbiosis — a  condition  where  distinct  com- 
munities or  countries  persist  in  a  division  of 
labor  for  mutual  benefit,  each  trading  some  of 
its  intellectual  or  material  products  for  equiv- 
alents secured  from  the  other.  In  many  parts 
of  Africa  there  are  fixed  markets  in  which  ne- 
groes from  fairly  remote  localities  congregate 
for  the  barter  of  wares,  which  are  thus  diffused 
[9l 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

far  from  their  source  of  origin ;  but  it  is  the  fin- 
ished products,  not  the  arts,  that  are  diffused. 
In  New  Guinea  trading- vessels  carry  such  objects 
as  pottery  hundreds  of  miles  from  the  area  of 
manufacture  to  natives  who  remain  as  ignorant 
of  the  ceramic  technique  as  before.  In  northern 
Arizona  the  Hopi  Indians  occupying  three  emi- 
nences not  more  than  eight  miles  distant  from 
one  another  have  no  perfect  uniformity  of  indus- 
trial knowledge.  Pottery,  which  flourishes  on 
the  eastern  Mesa,  is  wholly  unknown  as  an  art, 
though  constantly  used  in  its  specimens,  by  the 
people  of  the  central  Mesa;  a  certain  type  of 
basketry  plaque  is  made  only  at  Oraibi  village; 
another  type  is  manufactured  exclusively  on  the 
central  Mesa.  Conditions  more  ideal  a  priori 
for  a  transfer  of  knowledge  than  among  the  prac- 
tically homogeneous  neighboring  Hopi  groups 
could  not  be  conceived.  Nevertheless,  it  has  not 
taken  place.  Cultural  diffusion,  therefore,  can- 
not be  taken  for  granted.  We  cannot  take  one 
people,  place  it  alongside  of  another,  and  effect  a 
cultural  osmosis  in  the  same  way  in  which  we 
produce  a  chemical  reaction  when  two  sub- 
stances are  brought  together  under  proper  con- 
ditions of  temperature.  We  are  face  to  face  with 
a  selective,  with  a  psychological  condition.  But 
when  we  turn  once  more  to  our  text-books  of  psy- 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

chology,  we  again  find  nothing  that  fits  the  case. 
About  choice  in  general  we  get  ample  informa- 
tion. But  we  may  rummage  all  the  psychologi- 
cal seminar  rooms  in  the  world  and  yet  shall  find 
no  reason  why  the  Arabs  learned  the  technique 
of  paper-making  from  the  Chinese  instead  of  ig- 
noring it  or  only  importing  Chinese  paper. 

Nor  are  we  more  fortunate  when  we  turn  to 
psychology  for  an  account  of  how  the  original 
Chinese  inventor  came  to  conceive  his  epoch- 
making  idea.  This  fact,  of  course,  falls  under  the 
heading  of  'imagination',  and  about  imagination 
psychologists  have  much  to  tell  us.  But  what, 
after  all,  does  their  interpretation  amount  to? 
We  learn  that  imagination,  as  distinguished  from 
the  power  of  abstract  thought,  is  the  power  of 
forming  new  concrete  ideas.  Since  even  the  con- 
crete individual  idea  is  complex,  being  a  product 
of  association,  its  elements  may  be  linked  differ- 
ently so  as  to  produce  new  combinations.  "The 
inventor  of  a  new  mechanism,"  says  Hoffding, 
"combines  given  elements,  the  laws  of  whose  ac- 
tivity he  knows,  into  a  totality  and  a  connection 
which  has  no  complete  parallel  in  experience." 
The  scientist  tries  all  possible  combinations  among 
his  elements  of  experiences,  forming  a  succession 
of  individual  ideas,  which  are  rejected  until  the 
one  appears  that  adequately  represents  reality, 
[n] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

We  need  hardly  go  farther  to  realize  the  im- 
potence of  psychological  science  for  illuminating 
the  psychology  as  well  as  the  history  of  the  paper- 
making  art.  The  formulation  of  psychological 
science  is  admirable,  but  it  is  too  general.  It  ex- 
plains the  invention  of  the  steam-engine  and  the 
phonograph,  the  sewing-machine  and  the  har- 
vester no  less  than  the  origin  of  paper-making. 
We,  however,  do  not  want  to  know  merely  what 
ultimate  psychological  processes  the  invention  of 
paper-making  shares  with  all  other  inventions 
whatsoever,  but  also  the  differential  conditions 
that  produced  this  one  and  unique  result  under 
the  given  circumstances.  It  is  as  though  we 
asked  about  a  man's  character  and  were  told 
that  he  was  a  vertebrate.  The  type  of  psycho- 
logical explanation  we  want  is  by  no  means  un- 
known; however,  we  shall  find  its  illustrations 
not  in  text-books  of  psychology,  but  in  histories 
of  literature,  science,  and  art.  When  Taine 
raises  the  question  how  such  a  bore  as  Dr.  Sam- 
uel Johnson  could  conceivably  have  attained  his 
position  in  English  literature  and  answers  that 
it  is  because  of  the  English  predilection  for  ser- 
mons, he  is  giving  the  type  of  solution — whether 
right  or  wrong — that  we  want  to  secure  for  our 
cultural  problem;  it  explains  why  the  average 
Englishman,  as  a  member  of  English  society,  ac- 

[12] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

quires  the  habit  of  regarding  Johnson  in  a  certain 
way.  When  we  inquire  why  Newton  closes  his 
treatise  on  optics  with  a  statement  as  to  the  van- 
ity of  human  things,  our  curiosity  is  satisfied 
when  this  expression  appears  as  only  one  instance 
of  the  blending  of  theological  and  scientific 
thought  current  in  his  day.  It  is  nonsense  to  say 
that  these  explanations  are  purely  historical; 
they  are  psychological,  for  they  take  fully  into 
account  the  subjective  attitudes  involved  in  the 
phenomena  studied ;  and  it  is  hopeless  to  expect 
this  sort  of  explanation  from  psychological  sci- 
ence, which  deals  with  a  quite  distinct  and  far 
more  generalized  form  of  mental  activity. 

To  turn  from  the  technique  of  paper  manufac- 
ture to  a  very  different  cultural  feature  in  order 
to  test  the  possibility  of  merging  the  observed 
phenomena  in  the  principles  of  psychology.  In 
several  parts  of  the  globe,  and  most  prominently 
in  parts  of  South  America,  the  aborigines  practise 
a  custom  known  as  the  'couvade',  which  forces 
the  father  of  a  new-born  child  to  subject  himself 
to  a  period  of  inactive  confinement  and  a  series 
of  rigorously  observed  dietary  and  other  regula- 
tions. Let  us,  for  the  sake  of  bringing  out  the 
point  in  high  relief,  ignore  all  historical  considera- 
tions and  concentrate  exclusively  on  the  sub- 
jective elements  involved.  ,  Whence,  then,  this 
[13] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

strange  and  wholly  irrational  association  of  ideas 
between  fatherhood  and  a  group  of  taboos?  Now 
the  subject  of  the  association  of  ideas  occupies 
hundreds  of  pages  in  psychological  literature, 
yet  all  this,  in  itself  valuable  enough,  material 
has  no  bearing  on  our  problem,  because  it  is 
again  far  too  general.  We  do  not  doubt  for  a 
moment  that  the  association  we  desire  to  have 
illuminated  is  due  either  to  contiguity  or  to  a 
perceived  similarity  of  ideas,  but  why  have  we 
this  particular  association  instead  of  the  limitless 
multitude  of  associations  that  would  be  equally 
intelligible  by  the  same  formulae? 

Again,  many  aboriginal  tribes  of  Australia  are 
subdivided  into  two  halves,  membership  in  which 
is  inherited  through  the  father,  in  some  cases, 
through  the  mother  in  others.  These  moieties 
are  what  is  technically  called  'exogamous',  i.e., 
marriage  with  a  fellow-member  is  strictly  forbid- 
den. The  regulation  is,  indeed,  so  stringent,  the 
feeling  of  horror  evoked  by  a  transgression  so  vio- 
lent, that  in  former  times  offenders  were  promptly 
put  to  death.  This  sentiment  is  so  strong  that 
even  when  visiting  a  remote  tribe,  perhaps  a 
hundred  miles  away,  where  there  is  no  possibility 
of  blood-kinship,  an  Australian  will  avoid  mar- 
riage with  a  member  of  the  moiety  bearing  the 
same  name  as  his  own.  Here,  surely,  there  is 
[14] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

matter  for  psychology.  An  Australian  has  a 
violent  emotional  reaction  akin  to  our  aversion 
to  incest,  and  may  translate  his  feelings  into  the 
most  violent  action.  Or,  looking  at  the  matter 
from  another  angle,  the  Australian  exercises  an 
admirable  self-control,  eschewing  on  principle 
marital  relations  with  half  the  women  of  his 
community.  Yet  all  that  psychologists  tell  us  of 
the  ethical  feelings  and  the  will  leaves  the  prob- 
lem before  us  wholly  untouched.  Why  this  par- 
ticular curious  feeling  developed,  what  place  it 
occupies  in  mental  life,  the  psychologist  fails  to 
explain.  We  get,  again,  simply  general  formulae 
about  feeling  and  will  that  are  equally  applicable 
to  the  case  of  a  man's  beating  his  wife  or  a  boy's 
resisting  the  temptations  of  a  lollypop.  And 
this,  it  must  be  noted,  is  dealing  with  the  distinc- 
tively psychological  aspect  of  the  data.  Whether 
the  rule  in  question  originated  in  a  common 
center  and  thence  spread  to  other  tribes,  is  also  a 
cultural  question  of  great  importance,  and  this 
historical  phase  of  the  subject  psychology  is 
avowedly  incompetent  to  deal  with.  Psychology, 
then,  fails  throughout  to  supply  us  with  the  inter- 
pretation we  want.  It  is  as  impotent  to  reduce 
to  really  interpretative  psychological  principles 
the  subjective  aspect  of  cultural  phenomena  as 
it  is  to  explain  the  historical  sequence  of  events. 
[151 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

It  is  not  necessary  to  multiply  examples  to 
establish  the  point.  It  is  clear  that  cultural  phe- 
nomena contain  elements  that  cannot  be  re- 
duced to  psychological  principles.  The  reason 
for  the  insufficiency  is  already  embodied  in  Ty- 
lor's  definition  of  culture  as  embracing  'capabil- 
ities and  habits  acquired  by  man  as  a  member  of 
society'.  The  science  of  psychology,  even  in  its 
most  modern  ramifications  of  abnormal  psychol- 
ogy and  the  study  of  individual  variations,  does 
not  grapple  with  acquired  mental  traits  nor  with 
the  influence  of  society  on  individual  thought, 
feeling  and  will.  It  deals  on  principle  exclusively 
with  innate  traits  of  the  individual.  Now, 
whether  the  sharp  separation  assumed  here  be- 
tween the  innate  and  the  acquired,  between  indi- 
vidual activity  as  determined  by  uniquely  indi- 
vidual potentialities  and  as  determined  by  social 
environment,  can  be  made  in  practice  or  not,  one 
thing  is  clear :  there  are  phenomena  that  are  ac- 
quired and  in  no  sense  innate,  that  are  socially 
and  not  individually  determined.  When  a  Chris- 
tian reacts  in  a  definite  way  to  the  perception  of 
a  cross,  it  is  clearly  not  because  of  an  individual 
psychic  peculiarity,  for  other  Christians  react  in 
the  same  way.  On  the  other  haiid,  we  are  not 
dealing  with  a  general  human  trait  since  the  re- 
actions of  a  Mohammedan  or  a  Buddhist  will  be 
[i6] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

quite  diflferent.  Innumerable  instances  of  this 
sort  show  that  individual  thought,  feeling  and  vo- 
lition are  co-determined  by  social  influences.  In 
so  far  forth  as  the  potency  of  these  social  factors 
extends  we  have  culture;  in  so  far  forth  as 
knowledge,  emotion,  and  will  are  neither  the  re- 
sult of  natural  endowment  shared  with  other 
members  of  the  species  nor  rest  on  an  individual 
organic  basis,  we  have  a  thing  sui  generis  that 
demands  for  its  investigation  a  distinct  science. 
Does  it  follow  from  the  foregoing  that  there  is 
no  possible  relation  between  psychology  and  cul- 
ture, that  psychological  results  are  a  matter  of 
utter  indifference  to  the  ethnologist?  In  their 
desire  to  vindicate  for  their  own  branch  of  knowl- 
edge a  place  in  the  sun,  some  ethnologists  have 
come  very  near,  if  they  have  not  actually  reached 
such  a  conclusion.  To  me  the  case  appears  in  a 
somewhat  different  light.  Whatever  division  of 
labor  may  be  desirable  for  the  economy  of  sci- 
entific work,  knowledge  as  a  whole  knows  noth- 
ing of  watertight  compartments.  Further,  the 
nominally  distinct  sciences  are  not  subordinated 
to  one  another,  but  coexist  in  a  condition  of 
democratic  equality  and  cooperativeness.  We 
cannot  reduce  cultural  to  psychological  phenom- 
ena any  more  than  we  can  reduce  biology  to 
mechanics  or  chemistry,  because  in  either  case 
[17] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

the  very  facts  we  desire  to  have  explained  are 
ignored  in  the  more  generalized  formulation. 
But  for  specific  purposes,  the  student  of  culture 
can  call  for  aid  upon  each  and  all  of  the  other 
branches  of  learning.  It  is  a  very  important 
cultural  problem  whether  the  natives  of  South 
America  knew  the  bronze  technique,  i.e.,  whether 
they  consciously  produced  the  observed  alloy  of 
copper  and  tin.  But  how  can  the  ethnologist 
solve  this  problem?  Only  by  requisitioning  the 
services  of  the  chemist. 

Now  very  few  would  deny  that  services  of  the 
kind  rendered  by  chemistry  can  also  be  rendered 
to  the  study  of  culture  by  psychology.  Indeed, 
most  people  would  at  once  admit  that  the  rela- 
tionship with  psychology  is  a  priori  likely  to  be 
far  more  extensive  and  thorough-going.  A  few 
concrete  examples  will  illustrate  how  this  relation- 
ship may  be  conceived. 

Among  the  quaint  conceits  with  which  primi- 
tive cultures  abound  is  that  of  attaching  to 
particular  numbers  a  peculiar  character  of  sanc- 
tity. "Everything  in  the  universe,"  a  Crow 
Indian  once  told  me,  "goes  by  fours."  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  most  things  in  Crow  religious  life 
are  adjusted  to  this  conception.  An  important 
ceremonial  act  is  thrice  feigned  so  as  to  be 
actually  performed  at  the  fourth  attempt; 
[i8] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

religious  processions  halt  four  times;  songs  are 
sung  in  sets  of  four;  in  mythic  tales  it  is  the 
fourth  trial  that  carries  an  heroic  feat  to  a 
successful  issue.  Now  this  cultural  fact  very 
largely  eludes  psychological  interpretation.  The 
first  thing  that  strikes  us  is  that  this  feature  is 
no  peculiarity  of  the  Crow,  but  is  rather  widely 
distributed  among  their  immediate  neighbors 
and  even  remote  Indian  tribes,  though  jointly 
occupying  a  continuous  area.  Since  outside  of 
this  region  other  numbers  figure  as  mystic,  we 
cannot  regard  the  view  of  the  sacredness  of 
Four  as  a  general  trait  of  human  psychology 
but  must  assume  that  the  concept  was  borrowed 
by  most  of  the  tribes  now  holding  it.  A  wider 
survey  teaches  us  that  corresponding,  though 
not  identical,  conceptions  are  very  common. 
Seven  figures  in  parts  of  Asia,  Three  in  European 
folklore,  Five  in  Oregon  and  northern  Nevada, 
Six  among  the  Ainu  of  Yezo,  Nine  among  the 
Yakut,  Ten  among  the  Pythagorean  philosophers 
of  ancient  Greece,  very  much  as  Four  does  among 
the  Crow.  Now  the  fact  that  a  particular  Crow 
Indian  regards  Four  as  a  sacred  number  does 
not  mean  that  this  is  an  individual  peculiarity 
of  his  any  more  than  the  Christian's  reaction  to 
a  cross  is  a  proof  of  some  psychological  idio- 
syncrasy. Individually  the  Crow  Indian  may 
[19] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

be  quite  indifferent  to  the  number  and  yet  he 
would  view  it  as  sacred  because  he  has  been 
taught  so  to  regard  it.  This  is,  of  course,  the 
vital  difference  between  ethnology  and  psy- 
chology which  has  already  been  emphasized. 
Nevertheless,  the  association  must  at  one  time 
have  been  formed  in  an  individual  mind,  whether 
among  the  Crow  or  elsewhere,  and  the  question 
arises  as  to  what  such  an  association  means. 
Francis  Galton  showed  some  time  ago  that  such 
associations  of  definite  personal  characteristics 
with  numbers  occur  by  no  means  infrequently 
among  Europeans.  The  phenomenon  we  are 
dealing  with  is  thus  linked  with  a  group  of  re- 
lated phenomena  and  in  so  far  forth  is  explained. 
There  are  ethnologists  who  would  not  admit 
that  such  an  explanation  has  anything  to  do 
with  ethnology.  They  would  contend  that  as 
soon  as  we  cease  to  investigate  the  group  as 
such  we  are  passing  from  ethnology,  the  science 
of  culture,  to  psychology,  the  science  of  indi- 
vidual minds.  This  seems  an  unnecessarily 
narrow  doctrinaire  view.  Knowledge,  as  stated 
above,  is  not  subdivided  by  hard-and-fast 
partitions.  Interest  certainly  does  not  stop  at 
an  arbitrary  point  in  the  investigation  but  is 
centered  on  a  comprehension  of  the  whole 
phenomenon.     Where  that  phenomenon  is  an 

[20] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

alloy  of  tin  and  copper,  a  decision  as  to  its 
nature  is  naturally  left  to  chemistry;  it  seems 
not  unreasonable  that  where  it  is  a  type  of 
association  we  should  turn  for  enlightenment  to 
psychology. 

Another  field  supplies  an  additional  illustra- 
tion. One  of  the  important  subjects  for  ethno- 
graphic study  is  artistic  form.  The  ethnologist 
notes  in  a  purely  descriptive  way  the  decorative 
patterns  employed  by  various  tribes,  the  fact  that 
curvilinear  motives  are  prominent  among  the 
Maori  of  New  Zealand  while  the  rawhide  bags  of 
Plains  Indians  are  covered  with  angular  paint- 
ings. Here,  once  more,  it  is  clear  that  many  of 
the  problems  that  arise  are  purely  cultural. 
There  are,  nevertheless,  psychological  elements 
involved  that  may  be  misunderstood  without 
psychological  knowledge.  Let  us  assume,  e.  g., 
that  a  certain  tribe  is  artistically  characterized 
by  a  fondness  for  squares.  What  does  this 
predilection  signify?  It  is  a  psychological 
commonplace  that  through  an  optical  illusion 
we  exaggerate  the  height  as  compared  with  the 
width  of  a  rectangle;  accordingly,  the  geometri- 
cal square  does  not  coincide  with  the  psycho- 
logical square.  This  simple  piece  of  information 
enables  us  to  understand  what  we  are  actually 
dealing  with  in  the  case  of  a  square  pattern.    At 

[21] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

the  same  time  it  sharpens  our  observation 
regarding  such  patterns.  It  is  quite  conceivable 
that  in  one  place  tribal  taste  should  prefer  the 
actual  square  while  elsewhere  the  psychological 
square  occupies  the  seat  of  honor.  This  would 
be  a  purely  ethnographic  fact,  yet  its  discovery 
might  be  considerably  expedited  by  some  knowl- 
edge of  experimental  aesthetics. 

Let  us  turn  from  mystic  numbers  and  decora- 
tive designs  to  another  aspect  of  primitive  life. 
The  Turkish  tribes  of  western  Siberia  have  a 
form  of  religion  based  on  the  belief  that  certain 
individuals  enjoy  the  hereditary  privilege  of 
acting  as  intermediaries  between  their  ancestral 
spirits  and  the  people  at  large.  With  the  aid  of 
his  sacred  drum  the  shaman,  as  such  an  inter- 
mediary is  technically  called,  is  able  to  summon 
the  supernatural  beings,  cure  the  sick,  foretell 
the  future,  separate  his  own  soul  from  his  body 
and  send  it  to  the  upper  realms  of  light  or  the 
nether  regions  of  darkness.  Now,  although  a 
particular  individual  inherits  the  shaman's  office 
from  his  father,  he  receives  no  formal  instruction 
nor  does  he  make  any  active  preparation  for  his 
mission.  His  call  comes  in  the  form  of  a  sudden 
paroxysm.  He  is  seized  with  a  feeling  of  languor 
and  a  fit  of  violent  convulsions,  with  abnormal 
yawning,  and  a  powerful  pressure  on  the  chest, 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

which  causes  him  to  utter  inarticulate  screams. 
He  begins  to  shiver  with  cold,  rolls  his  eyes,  sud- 
denly leaps  up  and  madly  circles  about  until  he 
falls  down  covered  with  perspiration  and  writh- 
ing in  epileptic  spasms  on  the  ground.  His  mem- 
bers are  devoid  of  sensation,  his  hands  grasp 
without  discrimination  red-hot  iron,  knives,  pins; 
he  swallows  such  objects  without  suffering  the 
slightest  injury,  and  again  ejects  them  from  his 
mouth.  Finally,  the  prospective  seer  seizes  a 
shaman's  drum  and  assumes  the  shaman's  ofhce. 
Disobedience  to  the  spirit's  call  would  spell  dis- 
aster, madness  and  death  amidst  the  most  hor- 
rible tortures. 2 

The  naive  reaction  to  this  narrative  on  the 
part  of  common  sense  in  the  familiar  form  of 
common  ignorance  will  probably  be  that  the 
European  traveler  who  is  our  authority  is  a  very 
gullible  individual  if  he  believed  his  native  in- 
formant's statements.  How  can  an  individual  be 
seized  with  such  a  spasm  as  that  described?  How 
is  it  possible  for  him  to  become  devoid  of  sensa- 
tion? Nevertheless,  nothing  is  more  certain  than 
that  the  account  given  is  substantially  correct. 
It  is  simply  a  particular  form  of  nervous  afflic- 
tion very  common  throughout  Siberia  and  at- 
tested by  dozens  of  trustworthy  eyewitnesses.^ 
This  Arctic  hysteria,  as  it  has  been  misnamed 
[23] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

(for  there  is  nothing  distinctively  Arctic  about 
it),  manifests  itself  principally  in  two  ways. 
Either  the  individual  falls  victim  to  an  indiscrim- 
inate mania  for  mimicking  the  acts  of  others;  or 
he  is  seized  with  the  sort  of  paroxysm  described 
for  the  Turkish  shaman.  Nothing  is  clearer  than 
that  in  neither  case  is  there  usually  conscious 
deception.  Sometimes  the  imitation  mania  sub- 
jects the  sufferer  to  ridicule  and  pain,  as  when  an 
old  woman  in  imitation  of  a  Cossack,  seized  a 
salmon  with  her  teeth,  ran  up  a  hill  and  down 
again,  unable  to  prevent  herself  from  plunging 
into  the  water,  though  normally  she  was  barely 
able  to  walk.  Similarly,  the  numerous  hysterical 
individuals  of  the  other  type  who  do  not  become 
inspired  shamans  cannot  possibly  derive  any  ben- 
efit from  their  fits. 

Abnormal  psychology  here  steps  in  and  teaches 
us  that  such  trances  are  involuntary  and  not  the 
result  of  fraud,  that  they  occur  in  our  own  civi- 
lization and  are  accompanied  with  extraordinary 
lack  of  sensibility  to  pain,  in  short,  psychiatry 
classifies  the  observed  phenomena  and  tells  us 
what  we  are  really  dealing  with.  It  prevents  a 
misconception  alike  of  the  shaman's  activities 
and  of  the  attitude  of  his  people  towards  him. 

When,  however,  abnormal  psychology  has  so 
far  enlightened  us,  it  has  by  no  means  exhausted 
[24] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

even  the  purely  subjective  aspect  of  the  case. 
How  does  the  prospective  shaman  seized  with 
his  fit  know  about  the  shamanistic  drum  that 
forms  a  necessary  accessory  of  his  office?  How 
does  he  know  what  mode  of  activity  is  expected 
from  him?  These  are  not  things  which  he  can 
get  directly  from  his  trance  for  we  shall  hardly 
accept  the  aboriginal  theory  that  he  is  inspired  by 
the  ancestral  spirits.  He  can  derive  his  knowl- 
edge, however  informally,  only  as  the  member  of 
a  group  holding  certain  definite  views  as  to  the 
shamanistic  office.  The  cultural  phenomenon, 
then,  even  on  its  psychological  side,  comprises  a 
very  appreciable  plus  over  and  above  the  facts 
that  psychology  can  explain,  and  these  additional 
data  accordingly  require  treatment  by  another 
science. 

My  conclusions  as  to  the  relation  of  psychology 
to  culture  are,  accordingly,  the  following:  The 
cultural  facts,  even  in  their  subjective  aspect,  are 
not  merged  in  psychological  facts.  They  must 
not,  indeed,  contravene  psychological  principles, 
but  the  same  applies  to  all  other  principles  of  the 
universe;  culture  cannot  construct  houses  con- 
trary to  the  laws  of  gravitation  nor  produce 
bread  out  of  stones.  But  the  principles  of  psy- 
chology are  as  incapable  of  accounting  for  the 
phenomena  of  culture  as  is  gravitation  to  ac- 
[25] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

count  for  architectural  styles.  Over  and  above 
the  interpretations  given  by  psychology,  there  is 
an  irreducible  residuum  of  huge  magnitude  that 
calls  for  special  treatment  and  by  its  very  exist- 
ence vindicates  the  raison  d'etre  of  ethnology. 
We  need  not  eschew  any  help  given  by  scientific 
psychology  for  the  comprehension  of  specifically 
psychological  components  of  cultural  phenom- 
ena; but  as  no  one  dreams  of  saying  that  these 
phenomena  are  reduced  to  chemical  principles 
when  chemistry  furnishes  us  with  an  analysis  of 
Peruvian  bronze  implements,  so  no  one  can  dare 
assert  that  they  are  reduced  to  psychological 
principles  when  we  call  upon  psychology  to  eluci- 
date specific  features  of  cultural  complexes.  The 
'capabilities  and  habits  acquired  by  man  as  a 
member  of  society'  constitute  a  distinct  aspect 
of  reality  that  must  be  the  field  of  a  distinct 
science  autonomous  with  reference  to  psychology. 


[26; 


II.  CULTURE  AND   RACE 

If  culture  is  a  complex  of  socially  acquired 
traits,  it  might  appear  that  race  could  not  pos- 
sibly have  any  influence  on  culture,  since  by 
racial  characteristics  we  understand  those  which 
are  innate  by  virtue  of  ancestry.  This,  however, 
by  no  means  follows.  In  order  that  certain 
traits  be  acquired,  a  certain  type  of  organic  basis 
is  an  absolute  prerequisite;  a  chimpanzee  or  a 
bat  is  not  able  to  acquire  human  culture 
through  social  environment.  From  an  evolu- 
tionary point  of  view  it  appears,  therefore,  very 
plausible  at  first  blush  that  within  the  human 
species,  likewise,  differences  in  organization  should 
be  correlated  with  the  observed  cultural  mani- 
festations of  varying  degree  and  complexity. 
There  was,  undoubtedly,  some  stage  in  human 
evolution  where  the  organic  basis  for  culture  had 
not  yet  been  acquired.  Can  the  several  races  be 
regarded  as  transitional  forms,  each  possessed  of 
certain  capabilities  determining  and  limiting  its 
cultural  achievement?  This  question  can  be 
viewed  in  two  ways.  Comparative  psychology 
may  give  us  direct  information  as  to  qualitative 
and  quantitative  racial  differences  that  would 
affect  cultural  activity.  Or,  we  may  infer  such 
[27] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

differences  as  the  only  possible  causes  for  the 
observed  cultural  differences.  Both  modes  of  ap- 
proach are  helpful  for  a  comprehension  of  the 
problem. 

Until  recent  years  the  psychological  evalua- 
tion of  primitive  tribes  rested  largely  on  the  off- 
hand judgments  of  travelers  and  missionaries. 
With  the  advent  of  more  exact  psychological 
laboratory  methods,  these  have  been,  in  some 
measure,  applied  by  competent  investigators  to 
aboriginal  populations.  Unfortunately,  the  re- 
sults hitherto  secured  are  somewhat  meager. 
There  are  technical  difficulties,  among  them  the 
necessity  of  examining  fairly  large  numbers  of  in- 
dividuals in  order  to  get  a  good  sample  of  the 
population.  Worse  still,  laboratory  methods  are 
most  effective  in  regard  to  what  may  be  called  the 
lower  mental  operations,  which  partake  almost 
more  of  a  physiological  than  of  a  strictly  psycho- 
logical character.  Clearly  enough,  what  we 
should  be  most  desirous  of  knowing  is  how  prim- 
itive compares  with  civilized  man  in  logical 
thought  and  imagination.  But  these  are  pre- 
cisely the  things  not  readily  tested,  and  here  the 
additional  technical  difficulty  comes  in  that  they 
can  hardly  be  examined  at  all  without  a  far  more 
intimate  knowledge  of  the  native  languages  than 
the  investigator  is  likely  to  command.    Never- 

[28] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

theless,  something  has  been  done  and  I  will  at- 
tempt to  present  as  briefly  as  possible  the  essen- 
tial results,  following  Thorndike's  convenient 
summary.^ 

Although  some  observers  have  attributed  un- 
usual acuity  of  sense  perception  to  the  more  prim- 
itive peoples  of  the  globe,  the  investigations  of 
Rivers,  Woodworth,  and  others  in  the  main  es- 
tablish the  psychic  unity  of  mankind  in  this 
regard.  For  example,  though  the  Kalmuk  are 
renowned  for  their  vision,  only  one  or  two  of  the 
individuals  tested  exceeded  the  European  record, 
and  while  Bruner  found  Indians  and  Filipino  in- 
ferior in  hearing  a  watch  tick  or  a  click  trans- 
mitted by  telephone,  the  fairness  of  these  tests 
for  natives  unused  to  such  stimuli  has  been  rea- 
sonably challenged.  In  their  reaction-time  tests, 
widely  diflterent  groups  were  very  similar.  In 
the  tapping  test,  measuring  the  rate  at  which 
the  brain  can  at  will  discharge  a  series  of  im- 
pulses to  the  same  muscle,  marked  differences 
were  also  lacking;  but  when  accuracy  as  well  as 
rapidity  were  examined,  the  Filipino  seemed  de- 
cidedly superior  to  the  whites.  Optical  illusions 
were  shared  by  all  races  tested,  which  indicates, 
as  Woodworth  points  out,  that  simple  sorts  of 
judgments  as  well  as  sensory  processes  are  com- 
mon to  the  generality  of  mankind.  Woodworth 
[29] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

subjected  his  subjects  to  an  intelligence  test,  de- 
manding that  blocks  of  different  shapes  be  fitted 
into  a  board  with  holes  to  match  the  blocks.  In 
speed  the  average  differences  between  whites, 
Indians,  Eskimo,  Ainu,  Filipino,  and  Singha- 
lese are  small  and  there  is  considerable  overlap- 
ping. On  the  other  hand,  the  Igorrote  and  Philip- 
pine Negrito,  as  well  as  a  group  of  supposed 
Pygmies  from  the  Congo,  proved  remarkably  de- 
ficient. "This  crumb,"  concludes  our  investiga- 
tor, "is  about  all  the  testing  psychologist  has  yet 
to  offer  on  the  question  of  racial  differences  in 
intelligence." 

It  may  well  be,  as  Thorndike  suggests,  that  if 
higher  functions  were  studied,  more  striking 
differences  would  be  revealed.  But  up  to  date 
we  can  simply  say  that  experimental  psycholog- 
ical methods  have  revealed  no  far-reaching 
differences  in  the  mental  processes  of  the 
several  races.  Even  the  Igorrote  and  Negrito 
deficiency  may  be  due,  Woodworth  suggests,  to 
their  habits  of  life  rather  than  to  their  native 
endowment. 

Since  exact  methods  tell  us  nothing  of  those 
higher  operations  we  are  most  eager  to  know 
about,  it  might  be  deemed  advisable  to  fall  back 
on  general  estimates  by  the  most  competent  ob- 
servers. Unfortunately,  the  personal  equation 
l3o] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

enters  here  to  an  extent  that  completely  nullifies 
the  value  of  individual  judgments.  Travelers  in 
foreign  lands  are  likely  to  make  quite  unusual 
demands  on  the  capacities  of  the  natives  with 
whose  aid  they  are  working,  and  in  this  way  too 
frequently  arrive  at  an  unfair  conclusion  as  to 
their  mental  characteristics.  In  a  corresponding 
test  Europeans  might  do  little  better.  It  is,  at 
all  events,  remarkable  that  unbiased  observers 
who  are  fairly  sympathetic  and  remain  in  long 
contact  with  a  primitive  people  usually  entertain 
a  rather  favorable  opinion  of  their  powers.  Thus, 
Prince  Maximilian  of  Wied-Neuwied,  expresses 
the  view  that,  whether  other  varieties  of  man- 
kind differ  or  not,  the  American  aborigines  are 
not  inferior  to  the  whites, ^  and  corresponding  es- 
timates have  been  made  of  other  races.  Still, 
these  are  merely  personal  opinions  and  we  must 
turn  to  our  second  method  for  possibly  more  ob- 
jective, if  indirect,  evidence  on  the  subject.  Are, 
then,  cultural  differences  necessarily  the  result  of 
racial  differences? 

In  thus  investigating  the  relations  between 
race  and  civilization  we  may  fruitfully  employ 
the  method  of  variation.  Making  the  racial  fac- 
tor a  constant,  we  may  inquire  whether  culture, 
too,  is  thereby  made  a  constant,  and  whether  a 
change  in  racial  propinquity  is  correlated  with  a 
[31] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

proportionate  change  of  culture.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  may  start  with  culture  as  a  constant 
and  inquire  whether  each  form  or  grade  of 
culture  is  the  concomitant  of  definite  racial 
characteristics  and  whether  a  change  in  culture 
is  accompanied  by  a  corresponding  change  of 
race. 

To  begin  with  the  latter  method,  which  may 
be  briefly  disposed  of:  Taking  our  own  type  of 
culture,  as  represented  in  western  Europe  and 
North  America,  we  find  that  it  is  shared  by  at 
least  one  people  of  quite  distinct  stock,  the  Jap- 
anese, who  have  already  made  important  con- 
tributions to  the  general  civilization  of  the  world 
in  such  lines  as  biology  and  scientific  medicine. 
An  obvious  objection  is  that  the  Japanese  are  not 
the  originators  of  our  cultural  foundation  but 
have  borrowed  it  ready-made  (as  they  once  bor- 
rowed that  of  China),  and  merely  added  a  few 
additional  stones  to  the  superstructure.  This  fact 
cannot,  of  course,  be  questioned,  but  as  soon  as 
we  investigate  historically  the  origin  of  our  own 
modern  civilization  we  find  that  it,  too,  is  largely 
the  product  of  numerous  cultural  streams,  some 
of  which  may  be  definitely  traced  to  distinct 
races  or  sub-races.  Our  immediate  indebtedness 
to  Rome  and  Greece  has  been  drilled  into  us  with 
such  fulsomely  exaggerated  emphasis  in  our 
[32] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

schooldays  that  the  less  said  about  it  the  better 
for  a  fair  estimate  of  general  culture  history. 
That  the  Greeks  were  merely  the  continuators 
and  inheritors  of  an  earlier  Oriental  culture, 
must  be  considered  an  established  fact.  Our 
economic  life,  based  as  it  is  on  the  agricultural 
employment  of  certain  cereals  with  the  aid  of 
certain  domesticated  animals,  is  derived  from 
Asia;  so  is  the  technologically  invaluable  wheel.' 
The  domestication  of  the  horse  certainly  origi- 
nated in  inner  Asia;  modern  astronomy  rests  on 
that  of  the  Babylonians,  Hindu,  and  Egyptians; 
the  invention  of  glass  is  an  Egyptian  contribu- 
tion; spectacles  come  from  India  ;^  paper,  to 
mention  only  one  other  significant  element  of  our 
civilization,  was  borrowed  from  China.  What  is 
right  for  the  goose,  is  right  for  the  gander;  and 
if  the  Japanese  deserve  no  credit  for  having  ap- 
propriated our  culture,  we  must  also  carefully 
eliminate  from  that  culture  all  elements  not  dem- 
onstrably due  to  the  creative  genius  of  our  race 
before  laying  claim  to  the  residue  as  our  distinc- 
tive product.  As  Thorndike,  among  others,  has 
pointed  out,^  the  races  have  not  remained  in 
splendid  isolation,  but  any  particular  one  has  ob- 
tained most  of  its  civilization  from  without,  and 
"of  ten  equally  gifted  races  in  perfect  intercourse 
each  will  originate  only  one-tenth  of  what  it 
[33] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

gets."  This,  to  be  sure,  represents  an  ideal  con- 
dition, and  we  have  no  right  to  assume  gratui- 
tously that  the  peoples  in  contact  are  all  equally 
gifted;  but  it  is  worth  noting  that  momentous 
ideas  may  be  conceived  by  what  we  are  used  to 
regard  as  inferior  races.  Thus,  the  Maya  of 
Central  America  conceived  the  notion  of  the 
zero  figure,  which  remained  unknown  to  Euro- 
peans until  they  borrowed  it  from  India;  and 
eminent  ethnologists  suggest  that  the  discovery 
of  the  iron  technique  is  due  to  the  Negroes. 

In  short,  the  possessors  of  a  culture  are  not 
necessarily  its  originators;  often  they  are  dem- 
onstrably borrowers  of  specific  elements  of  the 
greatest  significance.  The  same  culture  may 
thus  become  the  property  of  distinct  races,  as  is 
rapidly  becoming  the  case  in  modern  times. 
Owing  to  the  very  extensive  occurrence  of  dif- 
fusion the  question  what  a  particular  people  or 
race  has  originated  becomes  extremely  compli- 
cated; while  it  is  an  established  fact  that  im- 
portant additions  to  human  civilization  have 
been  made  by  diverse  stocks. 

It  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  point  out  that 
not  only  the  more  tangible  elements  of  culture, 
but  very  much  subtler  ingredients  than  those 
hitherto  mentioned  are  shared  by  distinct  groups 
of  mankind.  Thus,  common  to  ourselves  and  the 
[34] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

Chinese,  though  strikingly  lacking  among  the 
Hindu,  who,  nevertheless,  are  racially  nearer  to 
us,  is  a  marked  sense  for  historical  perspective. 
Common  to  the  ancient  Romans,  the  modern 
Germans,  and  the  modern  Japanese,  is  the  talent 
for  rationalistic  organization  of  administrative  af- 
fairs. We  cannot  assume  under  the  circum- 
stances that  the  Japanese  are  organically  nearer 
to  the  Germans  than  to  other  Asiatics.  These 
instances  seem  the  more  valuable  because  here 
borrowing  is  excluded.  The  racial  factor  may  in 
some  way  be  involved;  it  is  conceivable  that 
only  with  a  certain  minimum  of  organic  equip- 
ment could  a  particular  cultural  trait  be  devel- 
oped or  even  assimilated.  But  obviously  the 
same  cultural  traits  may  be  coupled  with  differ- 
ent racial  characteristics. 

But  what  results  from  making  race  a  constant? 
That  no  essential  organic  change  has  taken  place 
in  the  human  race  during  the  historic  period  is 
universally  admitted  without  question  by  biolo- 
gists, physical  anthropologists,  and  brain  special- 
ists. Accordingly,  when  we  concentrate  our 
attention  on  a  definite  people  and  follow  their 
fortunes  during  historic  times,  we  are  dealing 
with  a  genuine  constant  from  the  racial  point  of 
view.  It  requires  no  very  great  acquaintance 
with  history  to  note  startling  cultural  diversity 
[35] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

correlated  with  this  stability  of  organic  endow- 
ment. 

The  culture  of  the  Mongol  proper  about  the 
beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century  was  that  of 
an  essentially  primitive  people,  sharing  the  sha- 
manistic  beliefs  of  their  general  habitat  and  ig- 
norant of  writing.  Suddenly  we  find  them  at- 
taining an  extraordinary  political  importance, 
dominating  Asia  and  menacing  Europe,  con- 
versant successively  with  several  forms  of  script, 
practising  the  art  of  printing,  and  becoming 
ardent  exponents  of  Buddhism.  Today  they  ap- 
pear fallen  from  their  high  estate,  devoid  of  polit- 
ical power,  and  with  their  semi-sedentary  nomad 
life  again  give  the  impression  of  primitiveness, 
though  tempered  with  evidences  of  a  higher 
civilization.^  These  changes  are  not  only  mani- 
festly independent  of  the  racial  factor,  but  can 
in  part  be  directly  traced  to  other  causes.  Bud- 
dhism, of  course,  was  derived  ultimately  from 
India.  Under  Jenghis  Khan  both  Chinese  char- 
acters and  an  alphabet  derived  from  the  Syrian, 
which  had  been  spread  through  central  Asia  by 
Nestorian  missionaries,  came  into  use;  while  an- 
other system  of  writing  was  based  on  that  of 
Tibet,  and  the  art  of  printing  was  learned  from 
the  Chinese.'^  The  political  predominance  of  the 
Mongols  was  due  to  a  few  powerful  personalities ; 
[36] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

and  economic  factors  seem  to  have  been  at  least 
potent  agents  in  the  degenerative  process  of 
Mongol  civilization.  In  short,  we  have  a  group 
of  determinants  that  are  not  even  remotely  con- 
nected with  hereditary  racial  traits. 

Somewhat  similar  results  appear  from  a  con- 
sideration of  Manchu  history.  The  Manchu 
were  originally  an  insignificant  and  rude  tribe  of 
the  Tungusic  family  in  eastern  Siberia.  Through 
contact  with  the  Mongols  they  became  a  literary 
people.  They  subjected  China  in  1644,  and 
adopted  the  Chinese  speech  and  mode  of  thinking 
to  such  an  extent  that  their  language  is  no  longer 
spoken  and  almost  every  vestige  of  their  former 
lore  is  irretrievably  lost.^ 

An  equally  striking  illustration  is  furnished  by 
the  Arabs.  Here,  too,  we  have  a  people  of  crude 
civilization  suddenly  emerging  from  an  unim- 
portant position  in  the  world's  affairs  to  blossom 
forth  not  only  as  a  military  and  political,  but  a 
cultural  power  as  well,  deriving  from  Persia  and 
Babylonia  the  impulse  to  philological  and  his- 
torical studies,  from  Byzantium  the  technique  of 
naval  warfare,  the  art  of  paper-manufacture  from 
the  Chinese,  Euclid  from  the  Syrian  outposts  of 
Greek  culture,  and  from  India  the  decimal  nota- 
tion.^ We  find  further  that  they  were  not  passive 
assimilators,  but  original  elaborators  and  active 
[37] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

transmitters  of  the  received  elements,  to  whom 
European  science  is  under  a  lasting  debt  of  grati- 
tude and  whose  art  constitutes  at  least  a  highly 
creditable  and  individual  achievement. 

The  conclusion  suggested  by  these  examples  is 
very  strongly  corroborated  by  an  examination  of 
our  own  race.  We  need  not  enter  into  the  sub- 
tleties of  sub-racial  classifications  for  the  present 
purpose,  but  will  simply  regard  the  European 
race  in  relation  to  European  culture  generally. 
It  is  clear  that  all  those  startling  technological 
advantages  that  most  sharply  divide  us  from 
other  peoples  are  a  mushroom  growth  little  over 
a  century  old.  In  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century  matches  were  unknown  and  the  processes 
of  fire-making  were  not  superior  to  those  of  many 
primitive  tribes.  The  steam-engine  and  the  in- 
dustrial revolution  are  of  very  little  greater  an- 
tiquity, not  to  speak  of  electrical  contrivances 
and  applied  chemistry.  The  difference  between 
ourselves  and  our  forefathers  is  at  first  blush  so 
tremendous  that  a  priori  it  would  seem  to  be  ex- 
plainable only  by  very  great  mental  differences, 
yet  nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  their  in- 
nate mentality  was  exactly  the  same.  The 
cultural  difference  becomes  more  and  more  glar- 
ing as  we  proceed  backwards,  say,  to  the  period 
antedating  the  art  of  printing.  A  portion  of  our 
[38] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

Middle  Ages  compares  rather  unfavorably  with 
contemporaneous  Arabian  or  Chinese  civiliza- 
tion. "If  we  go  back  to  the  fifteenth  century," 
says  Professor  Giles,  "we  shall  find  that  the 
standard  of  civilization,  as  the  term  is  usually 
understood,  was  still  much  higher  in  China  than 
in  Europe;  while  Marco  Polo,  the  famous  Ve- 
netian traveler  of  the  thirteenth  century,  who 
actually  lived  twenty-four  years  in  China,  and 
served  as  an  official  under  Kublai  Khan,  has 
left  it  on  record  that  the  magnificence  of 
Chinese  cities,  and  the  splendor  of  the  Chinese 
court,  outrivaled  anything  he  had  ever  seen  or 
heard  of."i« 

Certainly  the  racial  factor,  which  is  a  constant, 
cannot  account  for  the  amazing  changes  in  cul- 
ture which  we  encounter  in  passing  from  one 
period  of  our  era  to  another.  If  we  are  interested 
in  explaining  these  cultural  phenomena,  we  must 
cast  about  for  some  other  determinants. 

In  a  subject  that  is  constantly  confused  by 
partisanship  it  is  important  to  make  no  greater 
claims  for  an  argument  than  the  facts  absolutely 
warrant.  Accordingly,  I  hasten  to  explain  what 
has  really  been  shown  and  what  I  have  failed  to 
show  hitherto.  It  is,  I  think,  fair  to  say  that 
culture  cannot  be  adequately  explained  by  race, 
and  that  the  same  race  varies  extraordinarily  in 
f39l 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

culture  even  within  a  very  narrow  space  of  time. 
But  we  have  not  furnished  proof  that,  say,  the 
Central  African  Pygmies,  the  Tasmanians,  or  the 
aborigines  of  Australia  would  have  been  capable 
of  attaining  unaided  to  the  level  of  our  civiliza- 
tion. What  we  can  say,  however,  is  this:  The 
Chinese  and  some  of  our  American  Indians,  such 
as  the  ancient  Central  Americans  and  Peruvians, 
did  attain  a  very  high  level,  which  may  be 
equated  with  that  of  Europe  at  a  relatively  re- 
cent period.  The  difference  between  European 
culture  then  and  now  cannot  be  due  to  hered- 
itary causes,  and  it  would,  therefore,  be  unjusti- 
fiable to  allege  that  such  causes  account  for  the 
difference  between  Europe  of  today  and  China 
or  ancient  Central  America.  Quite  generally  it 
is  true  that  the  so-called  primitive  tribes  are  any- 
thing but  primitive  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term. 
Ingenious  contrivances,  such  as  the  boomerang, 
occur  among  the  Australians,  usually  regarded 
as  one  of  the  lowliest  of  races,  and  here  we  also 
find  a  remarkable  complexity  of  social  organi- 
zation. The  Negroes  of  Africa  are  not  only 
conversant  with  the  art  of  metallurgy,  which  is 
possibly  their  own  invention,  but  are  conspicu- 
ous for  their  ability  to  form  large  and  power- 
ful political  states  and  have  shown  at  least  the 
ability  of  assimilating  the  culture  of  Islam. 
I40I 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

If  we  contrast  Negro  culture  on  the  average  not 
with  the  highest  products  of  Dutch,  Danish,  or 
Swiss  culture,  but  with  the  status  of  the  illiterate 
peasant  communities  in  not  a  few  regions  of 
Europe,  the  difference  will  hardly  be  so  great  as 
to  suggest  any  far-reaching  hereditary  causes. 
As  the  highly  civilized  Manchu  of  today  have 
for  their  next  racial  kin  very  crude  Siberian  pop- 
ulations, so  the  white  race,  even  today,  embraces 
very  primitive  as  well  as  highly  advanced  con- 
stituent groups.  We  cannot  wholly  isolate  the 
racial  factor  from  others,  and  we  cannot  give  an 
ocular  demonstration  of  what  the  several  inferior 
races,  so-called,  are  capable  of  achieving  under 
the  most  favorable  conditions.  But  with  great 
confidence  we  can  say  that  since  the  same  race 
at  different  times  or  in  different  subdivisions  at 
the  same  time  represents  vastly  different  cultural 
stages,  there  is  obviously  no  direct  proportional 
relation  between  culture  and  race.  And  if  great 
changes  of  culture  can  occur  without  any  change 
of  race  whatsoever,  we  are  justified  in  consider- 
ing it  probable  that  a  relatively  minute  change 
of  hereditary  ability  might  produce  enormous  dif- 
ferences. An  analogy  may  render  the  matter 
clearer.  Suppose  that  it  is  of  vital  importance 
to  lift  a  heavy  weight,  say  400  pounds,  to  which 
only  a  single  individual  has  access  at  the  same 
[41] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

time.  Then  a  very  slight  difference  in  muscular 
power  will  either  accomplish  or  fail  in  producing 
the  desired  effect,  and  the  ultimate  effect  (say 
in  repelling  an  attack  on  a  fortress  under  rel- 
atively primitive  conditions)  will  be  entirely 
incommensurate  with  the  additional  strength  re- 
quired to  produce  it.  So  we  may  readily  under- 
stand how  a  slightly  greater  mechanical  aptitude 
might  render  one  race  able  to  launch  a  remark- 
able series  of  inventions  for  which  another,  by 
barely  missing  the  required  degree  of  develop- 
ment, would  be  forever  debarred.  This  is  only 
a  special  form  of  the  Darwinian  doctrine  of  the 
survival  value  of  small  variations,  applied  not  to 
the  question  of  the  struggle  for  existence  (with 
which,  nevertheless,  it  may  be  most  intimately 
related),  but  to  the  creation  of  new  cultural 
values. 

This  aspect  of  the  subject  naturally  leads  to 
another  that  is  closely  connected  with  it  and  is 
essential  to  an  understanding  of  the  entire  ques- 
tion. Mental  endowment  is  a  variable  phenom- 
enon within  any  particular  people  or  tribe. 
However  democratic  may  be  our  ideals,  the 
doctrine  that  all  individuals  are  born  equal  in 
point  of  ability  can  no  longer  be  seriously  main- 
tained. Every  race  must,  therefore,  be  regarded 
not  as  representing  a  single  point  of  mental  de- 
[42] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

velopment,  but  as  a  continuum  of  mental  values 
with  a  certain  range  of  variation.  In  compar- 
ing the  different  races  we  must,  accordingly, 
apply  the  canons  used  by  statisticians  in  com- 
paring series  of  variable  measurements.  Here  a 
matter  of  vital  importance  challenges  our  atten- 
tion. Two  series  may  have  the  same  average 
value  and  yet  differ  considerably  in  range.  Now 
it  is  obvious  that,  where  the  number  of  individ- 
uals considered  is  small,  excessive  values  are  less 
likely  to  occur  than  in  a  larger  series.  In  a  gath- 
ering of  a  hundred  men,  we  are  not  likely  to  find 
a  man  above  6  feet  6  inches  in  height ;  the  aver- 
age stature  of  all  New  Yorkers  will  probably  not 
be  any  greater  than  that  of  one  hundred  men 
selected  at  random,  yet  in  the  entire  city  we  shall 
find  a  number  of  individuals  of  gigantic  stature. 
When  we  apply  this  fact  to  our  special  problem 
we  see  at  once  that  extraordinary  deviations 
from  the  norm  cannot  be  expected  to  occur  in  a 
tribe  of  500  or  even  5,000,  while  among  the  vast 
populations  of  India,  China  or  the  Caucasian 
countries  of  America  and  Europe  such  favorable 
variants  are  likely  to  occur  with  considerable  ab- 
solute frequency.  These  variations,  as  has  al- 
ready been  suggested,  need  not  even  be  excessive 
to  produce  significant  cultural  results.  Again, 
we  may  urge  the  principle  of  minimal  variations. 
I43] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

A  little  greater  energy  or  administrative  talent 
may  be  just  sufficient  to  found  a  powerful  state; 
a  slightly  greater  amount  of  logical  consistency 
may  lead  to  the  foundation  of  geometrical  rea- 
soning or  of  a  philosophical  system;  a  somewhat 
keener  interest,  above  the  purely  utilitarian  one, 
in  surrounding  nature  may  give  a  remarkable 
impetus  to  the  development  of  science. 

Now  this  puts  an  entirely  different  construc- 
tion on  the  facts.  Assume  that  racial  differences 
are  at  the  bottom  of  some  of  the  observed  cultural 
differences.  This  fact  would  not  necessarily 
mean,  then,  that  the  average  ability  of  the  inferior 
races  is  less,  but  only  that  extreme  variations  of 
an  advantageous  character  occur  less  frequently 
among  them.  This,  for  example,  is  the  view 
taken  by  Professor  Eugen  Fischer,  the  physical 
anthropologist,  a  very  firm  believer  in  racial 
differences,  but  as  regards  variability  rather  than 
in  point  of  average  intellectual  equipment.  It 
is  also  essentially,  if  I  understand  him,  the  point 
made  by  Professor  Thorndike.  But  precisely 
because  the  population  of  the  several  races  differs 
so  enormously,  we  are  for  many  of  them  without 
a  fair  standard  of  comparison.  Statistically,  any 
actual  number  of  measurements  is  only  a  small 
sample  of  an  infinite  series;  but  we  have  no 
means  of  ascertaining  empirically  what  the  ex- 
'I44] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

treme  variations  of  which  Veddas  or  AustraHans 
are  organically  capable,  would  be  like.  This, 
necessarily,  leaves  the  ultimate  problem  of  racial 
differences  unsolved.  Nevertheless,  our  consid- 
erations have  not  been  in  vain.  They  show,  for 
one  thing,  how  many  factors  have  to  be  weighed 
in  arriving  at  a  fair  estimate  of  racial  capabilities, 
factors  which  are  naively  ignored  in  most  popular 
discussions  of  the  subject.  We  can,  farther,  say 
positively  that  whatever  differences  may  exist 
have  been  grossly  exaggerated.  In  the  simpler 
mental  operations,  comparative  psychological 
studies  indicate  a  specific  unity  of  mankind.  Dif- 
ferences in  culture  are  certainly  not  proportion- 
ate to  mental  differences,  i.e.,  relatively  slight 
differences  in  native  ability  may  well  have  pro- 
duced tremendous  cultural  effects.  Since,  finally, 
cultural  differences  of  enormous  range  occur 
within  the  same  race,  and  even  within  very  much 
smaller  subdivisions,  the  ethnologist  cannot 
solve  his  cultural  problems  by  means  of  the  race 
factor.  Even  if  an  ultimate  investigation  should 
definitely  fix  the  cultural  limits  to  which  a  given 
race  is  hereditarily  subject,  such  information 
could  not  solve  the  far  more  specific  problem 
why  the  same  people  a  few  hundred  years  earlier 
were  a  horde  of  barbarians  and  a  few  hundred 
years  later  formed  a  highly  civilized  community. 
[451 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

The  supposed  explanation  by  racial  potentialities 
would  be  far  too  general  to  interpret  the  actual 
happenings.  Racial  psychology,  no  less  than 
general  psychology,  thus  fails  to  solve  the  prob- 
lems of  culture. 


I46: 


III.  CULTURE  AND  ENVIRONMENT^ 

The  influence  of  geographical  environment  on 
culture  seems  a  matter  not  so  much  of  logical 
inference  as  of  direct  observation.  Taking  our 
own  continent,  we  know  that  cotton  is  raised  in 
the  South,  that  our  wheat  belt  lies  in  Minnesota 
and  the  adjoining  states  and  Canadian  provinces, 
that  the  Rocky  Mountain  and  some  of  the 
Plateau  states  are  the  seat  of  the  mining  industry 
while  Florida  and  California  form  our  tropical 
fruit  orchards.  With  these  obvious  facts  are 
combined  correlations  not  so  clear,  perhaps,  yet 
very  convincing  to  the  mind  as  yet  undebauched 
by  ethnological  learning.  What  seems  more  nat- 
ural than  that  culture  in  its  highest  forms  should 
develop  only  in  temperate  regions,  that  the 
gloomy  forests  of  the  North  be  reflected  in  a 
mythology  of  ogres  and  trolls,  that  liberty 
should  flourish  amidst  snowy  mountain  tops  and 
languish  in  the  tepid  plain,  or  that  islanders 
should  be  expert  mariners? 

This  geographical  theory  of  culture  bears  a 
certain  resemblance  to  the  classical  association- 
ist  theory  in  psychology.  According  to  that  doc- 
trine, the  mind  is  something  in  the  nature  of  a 
wax  tablet  on  which  the  outer  world  produces 
[47] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

impressions  and  all  the  higher  mental  activities 
are,  in  the  last  instance,  reducible  to  combina- 
tions of  the  represented  impressions  or  'ideas'. 
Modern  psychology,  however,  regards  this  sys- 
tem, fascinating  as  it  appears  at  a  first  glance, 
as  little  better  than  an  historical  curiosity.  The 
association  of  ideas  itself  is  now  conceived 
merely  as  a  special  manifestation  of  the  synthetic 
nature  of  consciousness.  In  short,  the  tables  are 
completely  turned,  and  association,  instead  of 
explaining  consciousness,  is  interpreted  in  terms 
of  consciousness.  The  analogy  with  the  geo- 
graphical view  of  culture  will  become  apparent 
in  the  course  of  our  discussion. 

To  begin  with  the  culture  of  our  own  country : 
The  environmental  features  of  southern  Cali- 
fornia, of  Nevada,  and  the  South  have  not 
changed  during  the  last  few  centuries.  Yet,  what 
do  we  find  on  considering  the  aboriginal  cultures 
of  these  regions?  Southern  California  and  Ne- 
vada were  unreclaimed  desert  wastes  inhabited 
by  a  roving,  non-agricultural  population,  the 
natural  mining  resources  of  the  latter  state  re- 
mained untouched,  no  attempt  was  made  to  grow 
cotton  in  the  Southern  cotton  area.  How  can 
such  facts  be  interpreted  on  a  geographical  basis? 
Quite  obviously,  the  reverse  holds.  The  utiliza- 
tion of  part  of  the  environment,  instead  of  being 
I48] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

an  automatic  response,  has  for  an  indispensable 
prerequisite  a  certain  type  of  culture.  Granted 
the  existence  of  an  agricultural  technique,  at- 
tempts may  be  made  to  apply  it  even  in  a  for- 
bidding arid  climate,  where  a  more  primitive 
culture  would  not  be  able  to  develop  it.  The  un- 
favorable environment  may  have  checked  such 
development,  and  in  so  far  forth  exerted  cultural 
influence  at  one  stage,  but  it  is  unable  to  check 
it  at  another  stage,  where  the  preexisting  cul- 
ture, instead  of  'remaining  put',  molds  the  en- 
vironment to  its  own  purposes. 

The  case  I  have  chosen  is  an  extreme  one 
because  I  have  correlated  environment  with 
extremes  of  culture — one  of  the  lowest  forms  of 
aboriginal  North  American  culture  and  our 
modern  advanced  scientific  methods  of  subduing 
nature  to  our  will.  But  if  we  consider  only  the 
cruder  forms  of  civilization  the  same  point 
appears  with  equal  clearness. 

Professor  Kirchhoff ,  by  no  means  an  extreme 
adherent  of  the  geographical  school  since  he 
does  not  reduce  man  to  a  mere  automaton  in  the 
face  of  his  surroundings,  nevertheless  believes  in 
a  far-reaching  influence  of  the  environment  and 
cites  in  particular  the  resemblances  between 
inhabitants  of  arid  territories.  Unfortunately 
for  his  argument  we  have  glaring  instances  in 
I49l 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

which  desert-like  conditions  coexist  with  dis- 
parate modes  of  culture  not  only  in  similar  but  in 
identical  regions  of  the  globe. 

Thus,  the  Hopi  and  Navajo  Indians  have  both 
occupied  for  a  long  period  the  same  part  of 
northeastern  Arizona  and  on  the  environmental 
theory  we  should  therefore  expect  among  them 
the  same  mode  of  life.  In  this,  however,  we  are 
thoroughly  disappointed.  The  Hopi  are  inten- 
sive farmers  who  succeed  in  raising  crops  where 
white  agriculturists  fail;  the  Navajo  also  plant 
corn  but  to  a  distinctly  lesser  extent  and  under 
Spanish  influence  have  readily  developed  into  a 
pastoral  people,  raising  sheep  for  food  and  wool. 
Though  the  same  building  material  is  available, 
the  Hopi  construct  the  well-known  terraced 
sandstone  houses  with  a  rectangular  cell  as  the 
architectural  unit,  while  the  Navajo  dwell  in 
conical  earth-covered  huts.  North  American 
ceramic  art  attains  one  of  its  highwater  marks 
among  the  Hopi,  while  the  pottery  of  the  Navajo 
is  hopelessly  crude  in  comparison.  Cotton  was 
raised  by  the  Hopi,  but  there  is  no  trace  of  its 
use  by  the  neighboring  people.  What  is  true  of 
the  material  aspect  of  native  life  applies  equally 
to  its  less  tangible  elements.  There  is  at  least 
one  marked  difference  in  the  sexual  division  of 
labor:  with  the  Hopi  it  is  the  man's  business  to 
[50] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

spin  and  weave  while  this  work  falls  to  woman's 
share  among  the  Navajo.  The  Hopi  were  always 
strict  monogamists,  while  among  the  Navajo 
polygamy  was  permissible.  In  conjunction  with 
their  agricultural  pursuits  Hopi  ceremonialism 
centered  in  the  magico-religious  production  of 
rain;  the  Navajo  applied  often  the  identical 
ritualistic  stock-in-trade  to  the  cure  of  sickness. 
A  stringent  regulation  of  the  Navajo  social  code 
forbids  all  conversation  between  son-in-law  and 
mother-in-law;  but  the  Hopi  merely  view  the 
taboo  as  a  Navajo  idiosyncrasy.  The  general 
cast  of  Hopi  psychology,  as  fashioned  by  Hopi 
society,  is  that  of  an  eminently  peaceable  popu- 
lation; the  Navajo  rather  recall  in  their  bearing 
the  warlike  and  aggressive  tribes  of  the  Plains. 
Where  resemblances  occur,  as  e.  g.,  in  the  objec- 
tive phase  of  the  native  cults,  we  are  able  to 
prove  that  the  parallelism  is  due  not  to  an 
independent  response  to  environmental  stimuli, 
but  to  contact  and  borrowing.  But  quite  apart 
from  such  cases,  the  basic  differences  in  Hopi 
and  Navajo  civilization  show  that  the  environ- 
ment alone  cannot  account  for  cultural  phe- 
nomena. 

If  we  pass  from  the  southwestern  United  States 
to  South  Africa,  a  corresponding  situation  con- 
fronts us.     The  same  area  at  one  time  formed 
[51] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

the  habitat  of  the  Bushmen  and  the  Hottentots ; 
yet,  their  mode  of  Ufe  varies  fundamentally. 
The  Bushmen  are  essentially  hunters  and  seed- 
collectors,  while  the  Hottentots  are  an  eminently 
pastoral  people.  Caves  and  crude  windbreaks 
form  the  Bushman's  original  dwellings,  while 
the  Hottentots  have  mat-covered  portable  bee- 
hive-shaped huts.  The  Bushman's  principal 
weapons  are  bow  and  arrow,  with  the  Hottentot 
these  implements  are  of  secondary  importance 
as  compared  with  the  spear.  It  is  true  that  not 
only  material  objects  but  even  myths  and  folk- 
tales are  shared  by  both  tribes,  but  in  many 
instances  of  this  sort  we  have  clearly  a  case  not 
of  independent  response  to  the  same  external 
conditions  but  rather  the  result  of  borrowing. 
Thus,  some  of  the  traits  common  to  Hottentot 
and  Bushman,  for  example,  a  fair  number  of 
mythic  episodes,  occur  likewise  among  the 
Bantu  Negroes  inhabiting  contiguous  but  geo- 
graphically different  territory.  One  of  the  most 
interesting  traits  of  ancient  Bushman  culture  is 
the  life-like  representation  of  animals  on  rocks 
and  the  walls  of  caves.  Oddly  enough,  these 
engravings  and  mural  paintings,  which  dis- 
tinguish the  Bushmen  from  their  South  African 
neighbors,  have  their  nearest  parallels  in  the 
Spanish  cave-paintings  of  Palaeolithic  Europe. 
[52] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

The  picturing  of  the  mammoth  and  reindeer  by 
these  old  South  European  artists  clearly  proves 
that  they  belonged  to  a  glacial  epoch,  during 
which  geographical  conditions  could  hardly  have 
resembled  those  of  the  Kalahari  desert.'' 

One  other  illustration  from  the  same  general 
region  of  the  Dark  Continent  is  suggestive.  The 
Ovambo  and  Herero,  neighbors  though  they  are, 
differ  in  the  essential  features  of  their  economic 
life.  While  the  Ovambo  depend  only  to  a  very 
limited  extent  on  their  herds,  deriving  their 
sustenance  mainly  from  the  cultivation  of  millet 
and  other  plants,  the  Herero  are  the  only  non- 
agricultural  Bantu  people,  being  predominantly 
pastoral. 

Instead  of  comparing  the  effect  of  environment 
as  a  whole  on  different  peoples,  we  can  also 
isolate  its  single  factors,  such  as  the  presence  of 
particular  species  of  plants  or  animals.  One  of 
the  strongest  cases  against  the  creative  influence 
of  environment  on  culture  lies  in  the  phenomena 
relating  to  the  domestication  of  animals  in  the 
Old  and  the  New  World.  The  one  animal 
domesticated  in  both  hemispheres  is  the  dog, 
which  occurs  in  Neolithic  Europe  and  is  also  found 
with  archaeological  remains  in  America.  But 
while  in  the  Old  World  there  is  in  addition  an 
imposing  series  of  species  subjected  to  man  for 
153 1 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

definite  economic  utilization,  it  is  only  in  Peru 
that  the  American  natives  entered  into  a  sym- 
biotic arrangement  with  other  animals,  viz.,  the 
llama  and  the  alpaca.  Why  was  not  the  bison 
of  the  great  Plains  tamed  like  the  buffalo  of 
southern  Asia  or  the  various  races  of  cattle  in 
the  Eastern  Hemisphere?  No  valid  reason  can 
be  advanced  on  geographical  grounds.  More 
striking  still  in  this  regard  is  the  difference 
between  the  hyperborean  populations  of  Asia 
and  North  America.  The  Chukchee  of  north- 
easternmost  Siberia  and  the  Eskimo  share  the 
same  climatic  conditions  and  their  territories 
are  both  inhabited  by  the  reindeer  (caribou). 
Yet  the  Chukchee  breed  half-tamed  reindeer  on 
a  large  scale,  using  the  animals  for  food  and 
draught  with  sledges,  while  no  attempt  in  this 
direction  was  made  by  the  Eskimo  or  any  of 
their  Indian  neighbors.  The  same  external 
condition  fails  to  produce  the  same  cultural 
result.  But  even  among  the  Chukchee  there  is 
evidence  that  the  use  of  reindeer  did  not  take 
place  in  response  to  an  environmental  stimulus. 
It  appears  that  the  extraordinary  development 
of  reindeer  breeding  is  a  relatively  new  thing 
with  the  Chukchee,  who  were  formerly  hunters 
of  sea-mammals  like  the  Eskimo.  Before  the 
recent  efflorescence  of  their  reindeer  culture,  the 
[54] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

Chukchee  waged  war  on  their  southern  neigh- 
bors, the  Koryak,  for  the  purpose  of  carrying  off 
their  herds;  and  altogether  it  seems  that  both 
Chukchee  and  Koryak  adopted  the  idea  of 
taming  the  reindeer  from  tribes  of  the  Tungus 
stock  Hving  to  the  west  and  south.^  We  are, 
then,  deahng  with  another  instance  of  accultura- 
tion due  to  contact. 

The  facts  of  domestication  are  unusually 
suggestive  as  regards  our  general  problem  for 
they  show  in  an  absolutely  convincing  manner 
that  even  where  the  same  animals  have  been 
domesticated  by  different  peoples  the  use  to 
which  they  are  put  may  differ  widely  and  give 
a  distinct  aspect  to  this  phase  of  culture.  Thus, 
we  find  that  of  Siberian  reindeer-breeders  the 
Tungus  and  Lamut  use  their  animals  only  for 
transportation,  not  for  slaughter,  and  that  many 
bands,  unlike  other  Arctic  populations,  ride  on 
their  reindeer  instead  of  harnessing  them  to 
sledges.  It  is  true  that  a  rationalistic  motive 
can  be  given  for  the  fact  that  the  Chukchee  do 
not  ride  reindeer-back  since  their  variety  seems 
physically  unfit  for  the  saddle.  That,  however, 
is  not  the  essential  point.  We  should  like  to 
know  how  the  Tungus  came  to  use  the  saddle 
with  their  animals  while  other  tribes  with  the 
same  variety  did  not  do  so,  and  for  this  positive 
I55l 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

reaction  to  their  faunal  environment  geography 
furnishes  no  clue.  A  similar  group  of  questions 
arises  in  connection  with  the  horse.  Wild  horses 
were  game  animals  in  Solutrean  times  in  Europe, 
their  flesh  forming  in  fact  the  staple  diet.  Do- 
mestication certainly  set  in  at  a  very  much  later 
period  and  its  economic  consequences  vary 
appreciably  with  different  peoples  and  in 
different  times.  The  Kirgis,  for  example,  milk 
their  mares,  thus  obtaining  the  famous  kumyss, 
though  the  operation  is  difficult  and  even 
dangerous.*  The  ancient  Babylonians,  Chinese, 
and  East  Indians  used  the  horse  as  a  draught- 
animal  harnessed  to  war-chariots.  Its  use  for 
riding  was  an  invention  of  Central  Asiatic 
nomads.  In  the  most  recent  period  the  con- 
sumption of  horse  flesh  is  a  matter  of  course 
among  the  poorer  classes  of  continental  Europe, 
revolting  as  the  idea  is  not  only  to  the  white 
American  but  to  some  of  the  Plains  Indians  as 
well,  according  to  the  testimony  of  some  of  my 
informants.  There  is  thus  no  such  thing  as  the 
presence  of  the  horse  determining  its  cultural 
use  in  a  definite  sense. 

Again,  the  ancient  Chinese  kept  both  sheep  and 

goats,  but  the  idea  of  utilizing  wool  for  clothing 

was    foreign    to    them.      We    have    historical 

evidence  for  the  fact  that  the  use  of  wool  for 

[56] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

felt  and  rugs  was  taught  to  the  Chinese  in  more 
recent  times  by  the  nomadic  populations  of 
central  Asia.  Most  startling  of  all  perhaps  is 
the  different  attitude  assumed  in  different 
countries  towards  cattle.  To  us  nothing  seems 
more  obvious  than  that  cattle  should  be  kept 
both  for  meat  and  dairy  products.  This,  how- 
ever, is  by  no  means  a  universal  practice.  The 
Zulu  and  other  Bantu  tribes  of  South  Africa  use 
milk  extensively  but  hardly  ever  slaughter  their 
animals  except  on  festive  occasions.  On  the 
other  hand,  we  have  the  even  more  astonishing 
fact  that  Eastern  Asiatics,  such  as  the  Chinese, 
Japanese,  Koreans  and  Indo-Chinese,  have  an 
inveterate  aversion  to  the  use  of  milk.  Though 
the  Chinese,  as  Dr.  Laufer  points  out,  have 
raised  a  variety  of  animals  from  which  milk 
could  be  derived  and  have  been  in  constant 
contact  with  Turkish  and  Mongol  nations  whose 
staple  food  consists  in  dairy  products,  they  have 
never  acquired  what  seems  so  obvious  and  useful 
an  economic  practice.  Accordingly,  Dr.  Laufer 
justifiably  concludes  that  "our  consumption  of 
animal  milk  cannot  be  looked  upon  as  a  self- 
evident  and  spontaneous  phenomenon,  for  which 
it  has  long  been  taken,  but  that  it  is  a  mere 
matter  of  educated  force  of  habit. "^  In  other 
words,  the  use  of  environmental  factors  is  not 
[571 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

an  automatic  and  necessary  response  to  them 
but  varies  with  the  culture  of  the  peoples 
concerned. 

The  creative  impotence  of  environment  and 
more  particularly  the  subordinate  part  it  plays 
as  compared  with  purely  cultural  determinants 
of  culture,  such  as  the  influence  of  a  certain  trait 
in  a  neighboring  tribe  or  the  preexistence  of  in- 
digenous cultural  features,  may  be  instructively 
illustrated  by  several  other  instances. 

Thus,  we  find  that  of  the  Northern  Atha- 
baskans  of  western  Canada,  the  southern  Carrier 
and  the  Chilcotin  Indians  share  with  the 
Shuswap  Indians  of  Salish  stock  the  use  of  semi- 
subterranean  huts  which  even  in  winter  seem 
like  ovens.  Are  we  to  recognize  in  this  an 
adaptation  to  the  inclemencies  of  the  climate? 
Hardly,  when  we  find  that  this  type  of  dwelling 
is  used  precisely  by  those  Athabaskans  living 
farthest  south,  where  of  course  the  climate  is 
much  milder,  while  the  more  northern  tribes  of 
the  family  get  along  with  crude  double  shelters 
about  a  central  fireplace.  The  use  of  the  semi- 
subterranean  lodge  by  the  Carrier  and  Chilcotin 
is  perfectly  explained  as  a  contact  phenomenon. 
They  have  simply  adopted  the  idea  from  their 
Salish  neighbors:  the  cultural  environment  has 
proved  more  effective  than  the  physical  environ- 
I58] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

merit  in  determining  a  cultural  trait.  Other 
members  of  the  same  family  furnish  correspond- 
ing instances.  Though  many  of  the  Northern 
Athabaskans  have  long,  snowy  winters,  only  the 
Loucheux,  who  are  in  contact  with  the  Eskimo, 
have  adopted  the  wooden  goggles  of  the  Eskimo, 
which  serve  as  a  protection  against  snow-blind- 
ness. Similarly,  they  are  the  only  members  of 
the  stock  to  substitute  for  the  widespread 
Canadian  toboggan  the  Eskimo  sledge  with 
runners.^ 

As  the  physical  environment  is  overshadowed 
in  cultural  significance  by  a  neighboring  culture, 
so  it  may  vanish  into  nothingness  in  the  face  of 
what  we  may  call  cultural  inertia — the  tendency 
of  a  preexisting  cultural  trait  of  indigenous 
growth  to  assert  itself.  A  familiar  example  of 
this  tendency  is  the  exact  imitation  of  forms  of 
implements  in  quite  different  and  often  refrac- 
tory material.  Thus,  the  Central  Eskimo 
generally  make  lamps  and  pots  out  of  soapstone. 
In  Southampton  Island,  where  this  material  is 
lacking,  they  have  not  devised  a  new  form  but 
have  at  the  expenditure  of  much  ingenuity  and 
labor  cemented  together  slabs  of  limestone  so  as 
to  produce  the  traditional  shape.''  The  same 
phenomenon  appears  in  other  fields.  Grooved 
copper  axes  have  been  found  in  parts  of  the 
[59] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

United  States;  their  shape  is  patterned  exactly 
on  the  stone  axes  characteristic  of  the  same 
localities.  The  beginnings  of  the  copper  and 
bronze  ages  in  Europe  are  equally  suggestive  in 
this  regard.  The  incipient  metallurgist  does  not 
automatically  make  the  most  of  his  material  but 
slavishly  follows  his  stone  or  bone  models.  His 
copper  ornaments  imitate  bear's  teeth  or  bone 
beads,  his  implements  resemble  the  stone  celts 
and  hammers  of  an  earlier  era.^  As  Professor 
Boas  points  out  on  the  basis  of  Bogoras'  descrip- 
tions, an  equivalent  development  may  be  traced 
in  the  history  of  the  Chukchee  tent.  This  type 
of  habitation  is  extremely  clumsy  and  not  at 
all  well  adapted  to  the  roving  life  of  the  Rein- 
deer division  of  the  tribe,  considerably  hamper- 
ing their  progress.  It  represents,  however,  a 
variety  of  the  older  form  of  stationary  house 
used  when  the  Chukchee  were  a  purely  maritime 
people.^ 

It  might  be  objected  that  maladjustments  of 
this  sort  are  transitional,  that  just  as  the  copper 
and  bronze  workers  ultimately  freed  themselves 
from  the  influence  of  the  preexisting  stone 
technique  so  the  Chukchee  would  finally  have 
abandoned  their  inconvenient  tent  and  developed 
a  new  and  more  readily  transportable  lodge. 
This  sounds,  of  course,  very  plausible  but  misses 
[60] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

the  point  of  the  argument.  Undoubtedly,  a  more 
and  more  perfect  adaptation  to  elements  of  the 
physical  surroundings  has  repeatedly  taken 
place.  But  the  very  fact  that  culture  history, 
on  its  material  side,  implies  this  progressive 
adjustment  also  implies  that  the  cultural  phe- 
nomena at  different  periods  of  time  differ  where 
the  same  environmental  stimuli  persist  and 
therefore  cannot  be  explained  by  them,  which  is 
what  we  have  been  trying  to  prove. 

Indeed,  environment  is  not  only  unable  to 
create  cultural  features,  in  some  instances  it  is 
even  incapable  of  perpetuating  them.  Thus, 
pottery  was  once  distributed  over  an  extensive 
region  in  the  New  Hebrides  but  is  now  restricted 
to  a  few  isolated  localities  on  a  single  island. 
Again,  in  southeastern  New  Guinea  ancient 
pottery  has  been  found  that  vastly  surpasses  its 
present  representatives  in  point  of  craftsman- 
ship,^" A  similar  phenomenon  has  been  noted  in 
the  Southwest  of  the  United  States,  where  the 
evolution  and  deterioration  of  glazed  earthen- 
ware may  be  clearly  traced  in  the  same  region. ^"^ 
Dr.  Rivers  has  pointed  out  an  even  more  instruc- 
tive example  of  cultural  degeneration.  In  the 
Torres  Islands  of  Melanesia  the  natives  have  no 
canoes  for  traversing  the  channels  which  separate 
their  islands  from  one  another  but  are  obliged  to 
[6i] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

use  unseaworthy  bamboo  rafts  inadequate  even 
for  fishing  purposes.  Yet  there  is  evidence  that 
the  Torres  Islanders  once  shared  the  art  of 
canoe-making  with  their  fellow-Oceanians  and 
that  it  has  died  out  in  recent  times  independently 
of  European  influence.  It  is  difficult  to  con- 
ceive of  any  people  less  likely  a  priori  to  lose  the 
art  of  navigation  than  a  South  Sea  Island  group ; 
yet,  their  maritime  environment  proved  inade- 
quate to  preserve  so  vital  a  feature  of  their 
daily  life. 

To  sum  up:  Environment  cannot  explain 
culture  because  the  identical  environment  is 
consistent  with  distinct  cultures;  because  cul- 
tural traits  persist  from  inertia  in  an  unfavorable 
environment;  because  they  do  not  develop 
where  they  would  be  of  distinct  advantage  to  a 
people;  and  because  they  may  even  disappear 
where  one  would  least  expect  it  on  geographical 
principles. 

Shall  we  then  cavalierly  banish  geography 
from  cultural  considerations?  This  would  be 
manifestly  going  beyond  the  mark.  Geographi- 
cal phenomena  can  no  more  be  discarded  than 
can  psychological  phenomena.  They  repre- 
sent in  the  first  place  a  limiting  condition. 
As  cultures  cannot  contravene  psychological 
principles  so  they  cannot,  except  in  a  limited 
162 1 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

measure,  override  geographical  factors.  To  use 
some  drastically  clear  if  somewhat  hackneyed 
examples,  the  Eskimo  do  not  eat  coconuts  nor  do 
the  Oceanians  build  snow-houses;  where  the 
horse  does  not  occur  it  cannot  be  domesticated; 
in  the  Hopi  country  where  watercourses  are 
lacking  navigation  naturally  did  not  develop. 
As  Jochelson  points  out,  the  Koryak  of  north- 
eastern Siberia  cannot  cultivate  cereals  because 
of  the  low  temperature  and  they  cannot  succeed 
as  cattle-breeders  because  of  the  poor  quality 
of  the  grasses. ^2  This  minimum  recognition  of 
environment  as  a  purely  negative  factor,  how- 
ever, does  not  do  full  justice  to  it.  Take  the 
bison  out  of  the  Plains  Indian's  life  and  his 
cultural  atmosphere  certainly  changes.  Never- 
theless, we  have  seen  that  the  presence  of  the 
bison  by  no  means  fully  determined  the  cultural 
employment  possible.  Instead  of  hunting  it  as 
the  Solutrean  Europeans  did  the  wild  horse,  the 
Indian  might  have  domesticated  it  as  his  name- 
sake by  misnomer  in  Asia  domesticated  the 
buffalo.  The  environment,  then,  enters  into 
culture,  not  as  a  formative  but  rather  as  an 
inert  element  ready  to  be  selected  from  and 
molded.  It  is,  of  course,  a  matter  of  biological 
necessity  for  a  people  to  establish  some  sort  of 
adaptation  to  surrounding  conditions,  but  such 
[63] 


Culture       and       ethnology 

adaptation  is  no  more  spontaneously  generated 
by  the  environment  than  are  strictly  biological 
adaptations.  There  are  alternatives  to  adapta- 
tion— migration  and  destruction. 

It  is  true,  as  Dr.  Wissler  has  forcibly  pointed 
out,  that  when  some  kind  of  adjustment  has 
once  been  established  it  will  tend  to  persist  in 
the  region  of  its  origin.^'  This,  however,  illus- 
trates not  so  much  the  active  influence  of  envi- 
ronment as  rather  the  tremendous  force  of 
cultural  inertia  which  tends  to  perpetuate  an 
old  muddling-along  adjustment,  however  imper- 
fect, provided  only  it  has  bare  survival  value. 

Altogether  we  may  illustrate  the  relations  of 
culture  to  environment  by  an  analogy  used  by 
Dr.  Wissler  in  another  connection,  which  also 
brings  us  back  to  my  initial  analogy  of  the  envi- 
ronmental theory  with  the  associationist  system 
in  psychology.  The  environment  furnishes  the 
builders  of  cultural  structures  with  brick  and 
mortar  but  it  does  not  furnish  the  architect's 
plan.  As  the  illustrations  cited  clearly  prove, 
there  is  a  variety  of  ways  in  which  the  same 
materials  can  be  put  together,  nay,  there  is 
always  a  range  of  choice  as  regards  the  materials 
themselves.  The  development  of  a  particular 
architectural  style  and  the  selection  of  a  special 
material  from  among  an  indefinite  number  of 
[64] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

possible  styles  and  materials  are  what  character- 
ize a  given  culture.  Since  geography  permits 
more  than  a  single  adjustment  to  the  same 
conditions,  it  cannot  give  the  interpretation 
sought  by  the  student  of  culture.  Culture  can 
no  more  be  built  up  of  environmental  blocks 
than  can  consciousness  out  of  isolated  ideas; 
and  as  the  association  of  ideas  already  implies 
the  synthetizing  faculty  of  consciousness,  so  the 
assemblage  and  use  of  environmental  factors 
after  a  definite  plan  already  implies  the  selective 
and  synthetic  agency  of  a  preexisting  or  nascent 
culture. 


[65] 


IV.  THE  DETERMINANTS  OF  CULTURE 

Psychology,  racial  differences,  geographical 
environment,  have  all  proved  inadequate  for  the 
interpretation  of  cultural  phenomena.  The 
inference  is  obvious.  Culture  is  a  thing  sui 
generis  which  can  be  explained  only  in  terms  of 
itself.  This  is  not  mysticism  but  sound  scien- 
tific method.  The  biologist,  whatever  meta- 
physical speculations  he  may  indulge  in  as  to 
the  ultimate  origin  of  life,  does  not  depart  in  his 
workaday  mood  from  the  principle  that  every 
cell  is  derived  from  some  other  cell.  So  the 
ethnologist  will  do  well  to  postulate  the  prin- 
ciple, Omnis  cultura  ex  cuUura.^  This  means 
that  he  will  account  for  a  given  cultural  fact  by 
merging  it  in  a  group  of  cultural  facts  or  by 
demonstrating  some  other  cultural  fact  out  of 
which  it  has  developed.  The  cultural  phe- 
nomenon to  be  explained  may  either  have  an 
antecedent  within  the  culture  of  the  tribe  where 
it  is  found  or  it  may  have  been  imported  from 
without.  Both  groups  of  determinants  must  be 
considered. 

The  extraneous  determinants  of  culture 
summed  up  under  the  heading  of  'diffusion'  or 
'contact  of  peoples'  have  been  repeatedly 
[66] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

referred  to  in  the  preceding  pages.  A  somewhat 
detailed  examination  seems  desirable,  for  it  is 
difficult  to  exaggerate  their  importance. 

"Civilization,"  says  Tylor,  "is  a  plant  much 
oftener  propagated  than  developed  ;"2  and  the 
latest  ethnographic  memoir  that  comes  to  hand 
voices  the  same  sentiment :  "It  is  and  has  always 
been  much  easier  to  borrow  an  idea  from  one's 
neighbors  than  to  originate  a  new  idea;  and 
transmission  of  cultural  elements,  which  in  all 
ages  has  taken  place  in  a  great  many  different 
ways,  is  and  has  been  one  of  the  greatest  pro- 
moters of  cultural  development."' 

A  stock  illustration  of  cultural  assimilation  is 
that  of  the  Japanese,  who  in  the  nineteenth 
century  adopted  our  scientific  and  technological 
civilization  ready-made,  just  as  at  an  earlier 
period  they  had  acquired  wholesale  the  culture 
of  China.  It  is  essential  to  note  that  it  is  not 
always  the  people  of  lower  culture  who  remain 
passive  recipients  in  the  process  of  diflfusion. 
This  is  strikingly  shown  by  the  spread  of  Indian 
corn.  The  white  colonist  "did  not  simply  borrow 
the  maize  seed  and  then  in  conformity  with  his 
already  established  agricultural  methods,  or  on 
original  lines,  develop  a  maize  culture  of  his 
own,"  but  "took  over  the  entire  material  com- 
plex of  maize  culture"  as  found  among  the 
[67] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

aborigines.^  The  history  of  Indian  corn  also 
illustrates  the  remarkable  rapidity  with  which 
cultural  possessions  may  travel  over  the  globe. 
Unknown  in  the  Old  World  prior  to  the  discovery 
of  America,  it  is  mentioned  as  known  in  Europe 
in  1539  and  had  reached  China  between  1540 
and  1570.^ 

The  question  naturally  arises  here,  whether 
this  process  of  diffusion,  which  in  modern  times 
is  a  matter  of  direct  observation,  could  have  been 
of  importance  during  the  earlier  periods  of  human 
history  when  means  of  communication  were  of 
a  more  primitive  order.  So  far  as  this  point  is 
concerned,  we  must  always  remember  that 
methods  of  transportation  progressed  very 
slightly  from  the  invention  of  the  wheeled  cart 
until  the  most  recent  times.  As  Montelius 
suggests,  the  periods  of  1700  b.  c.  and  1700  a.  d. 
differed  far  less  in  this  regard  than  might  be 
supposed  on  superficial  consideration.  Yet  we 
know  the  imperfection  of  facilities  for  travel  did 
not  prevent  dissemination  of  culture  in  historic 
times. 

The  great  Swedish  archaeologist  has,  indeed, 
given  us  a  most  fascinating  picture  of  the 
commercial  relations  of  northern  Europe  in 
earlier  periods  and  their  effect  on  cultural 
development,^  We  learn  with  astonishment  that 
168] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

in  the  ninth  and  tenth  centuries  of  our  era, 
trade  was  carried  on  with  great  intensity  be- 
tween the  North  of  Europe  and  the  Moham- 
medan culture  sphere  since  tens  of  thousands  of 
Arabic  coins  have  been  found  on  Swedish  soil. 
But  intercourse  with  remote  countries  dates 
back  to  a  far  greater  antiquity.  One  of  the 
most  powerful  stimuli  of  commercial  relations 
between  northern  and  southern  Europe  was 
the  desire  of  the  more  southern  populations  to 
secure  amber,  a  material  confined  to  the  Baltic 
region  and  occurring  more  particularly  about 
Jutland  and  the  mouth  of  the  Vistula.  Amber 
beads  have  been  found  not  only  in  Swiss  pile- 
dwellings^  but  also  in  Mycenaean  graves  of  the 
second  millennium  b.  c.  Innumerable  finds  of 
amber  work  in  Italy  and  other  parts  of  southern 
Europe  prove  the  importance  attached  to  this 
article,  which  was  exchanged  for  copper  and 
bronze.  The  composition  of  Scandinavian 
bronzes  indicates  that  their  material  was 
imported  not  from  England  but  from  the  far- 
away regions  of  central  Europe.  That  bronze 
was  not  of  indigenous  manufacture  is  certain 
because  tin  does  not  occur  in  Sweden  at  all  while 
the  copper  deposits  of  northern  Scandinavia 
remained  untouched  until  about  1500  years  after 
the  end  of  the  Bronze  Age.  Considering  the 
[69] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

high  development  of  the  bronze  technique  in 
Scandinavia  and  the  fact  that  every  pound  of 
bronze  had  to  be  imported  from  without,  it 
would  be  difficult  to  exaggerate  the  extent  of 
contact  with  the  southern  populations.  But 
intercourse  was  not  limited  to  the  South.  For 
example,  Swedish  weapons  and  implements  have 
been  discovered  in  Finland.  Again,  crescent- 
shaped  gold  ornaments  of  Irish  provenance  have 
been  found  in  Denmark,  while  a  Swedish  rock- 
painting  represents  with  painstaking  exactness 
a  type  of  bronze  shield  common  at  a  certain 
prehistoric  period  of  England. 

Montelius  shows  that  historical  connections 
of  the  type  so  amply  attested  for  the  Bronze 
Age  also  obtained  in  the  preceding  Neolithic  era. 
Swedish  hammers  of  stone  dating  back  to  the 
third  pre-Christian  millennium  and  f^int  daggers 
have  been  found  in  Finland,  and  earthenware 
characteristic  of  Neolithic  Scandinavia  also 
turns  up  on  the  Baltic  coast  of  Russia.  Stone 
burial  cists  with  a  peculiar  oval  opening  at  one 
end  occur  in  a  limited  section  of  southwestern 
Sweden  and  likewise  in  England.  Since  such 
monuments  have  been  discovered  neither  in 
other  parts  of  Sweden  nor  in  Jutland  or  the 
Danish  islands,  they  point  to  a  direct  intercourse 
between  Britain  and  western  Sweden  at  about 
[70] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

2,000  B.  c.  A  still  older  form  of  burial  unites 
Scandinavia  with  other  parts  of  the  continent. 
Chambers  built  up  of  large  stones  set  up  edge- 
wise and  reaching  from  the  floor  to  the  roof,  the 
more  recent  ones  with  and  the  older  without  a 
long  covered  passage,  are  highly  characteristic  of 
Sweden,  Denmark,  the  British  Isles,  and  the 
coasts  of  Europe  from  the  Vistula  embouchure 
to  the  coasts  of  France  and  Portugal,  of  Italy, 
Greece,  the  Crimea,  North  Africa,  Syria,  and 
India.  Specific  resemblances  convince  the  most 
competent  judges  that  some,  at  least,  of  these 
widely  diffused  'dolmens'  are  historically  con- 
nected with  their  Swedish  equivalents,  and 
since  the  oldest  of  these  Northern  chambers  go 
back  3,000  years  before  our  era,  we  thus  have 
evidence  of  cultural  diffusion  dating  back 
approximately  five  millennia. 

It  is  highly  interesting  to  trace  under  Mon- 
telius'  guidance  the  development  of  culture  as  it 
seems  to  have  actually  taken  place  in  southern 
Sweden.  Beginning  with  the  earliest  periods,  we 
find  the  coastal  regions  inhabited  by  a  popula- 
tion of  fishermen  and  hunters.  At  a  subsequent 
stage  coarse  pottery  appears  with  articles  of  bone 
and  antler,  and  there  is  evidence  that  the  dog 
has  become  domesticated.  In  the  later  Neo- 
lithic era  perfectly  polished  stone  hammers  and 
[71 1 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

exquisitely  chipped  flint  implements  occur, 
together  with  indications  that  cattle,  horses, 
sheep  and  pigs  are  domesticated  and  that  the 
cultivation  of  the  soil  has  begun.  Roughly 
speaking,  we  may  assume  that  the  culture  of 
Scandinavia  at  the  end  of  the  Stone  Age  re- 
sembled in  advancement  that  of  the  agricultural 
North  American  and  Polynesian  tribes  as  found 
by  the  first  European  explorers.  We  may  assume 
a  long  period  of  essentially  indigenous  cultural 
growth  followed  towards  its  close  by  intimate 
relations  with  alien  populations.  Nevertheless, 
it  was  the  more  extensive  contact  of  the  Bronze 
period  that  rapidly  raised  the  ancestral  Swedes 
to  a  cultural  position  high  above  a  primitive 
level,  with  accentuation  of  agriculture,  the  use 
of  woolen  clothing,  and  a  knowledge  of  metal- 
lurgy. It  was  again  foreign  influence  that  later 
brought  the  knowledge  of  iron  and  in  the  third 
century  of  our  era  transformed  the  Scandi- 
navians into  a  literary  people,  flooded  their 
country  with  art  products  of  the  highest  then 
existing  Roman  civilization,  and  ultimately 
introduced  Christianity. 

The   case  of  Scandinavian   culture   is   fairly 
typical.    We  have  first  a  long'continued  course 
of  leisurely  and  relatively  undisturbed  develop- 
ment, which  is  superseded  by  a  tremendously 
[72] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

rapid  assimilation  of  cultural  elements  from 
without.  Through  contact  with  tribes  possessing 
a  higher  civilization  the  ancient  Scandinavians 
came  to  participate  in  its  benefits  and  even  to 
excel  in  special  departments  of  it,  such  as 
bronze  work,  which  from  lack  of  material,  they 
would  have  been  physically  incapable  of  devel- 
oping unaided.  Diffusion  was  the  determinant 
of  Scandinavian  cultural  progress  from  savagery 
to  civilization. 

It  is  obvious  that  this  insistence  on  contact  of 
peoples  as  a  condition  of  cultural  evolution  does 
not  solve  the  ultimate  problem  of  the  origin  of 
culture.  The  question  naturally  obtrudes  itself: 
If  the  Scandinavians  obtained  their  civilization 
from  the  Southeast,  how  did  the  Oriental  cultures 
themselves  originate?  Nevertheless,  when  we  ex- 
amine these  higher  civilizations  of  the  Old  World, 
we  are  again  met  with  indubitable  evidence  that 
one  of  the  conditions  of  development  is  the  con- 
tact of  peoples  and  the  consequent  diffusion  of 
cultural  elements.  This  appears  clearly  from  a 
consideration  of  the  ancient  civilizations  of 
Egypt,  Babylonia,  and  China. 

We  now  have  abundant  evidence  for  a  later 

Stone  Age  in  Egypt  with  an  exceptionally  high 

development  of  the  art  of  chipping,  as  well  as 

specimens  of  pottery  and  other  Indications  of  a 

[73] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

sedentary  mode  of  life.  About  5,000  b.  c.  this 
undisturbed  evolution  began  to  suffer  from  a 
series  of  migrations  of  West  Asiatic  tribes, 
bringing  in  their  wake  a  number  of  cultivated 
plants  and  domesticated  animals,  as  well  as  vari- 
ous other  features  which  possibly  included  the  art 
of  smelting  copper,  while  the  ceramic  ware  of  the 
earlier  period  agrees  so  largely  with  that  of  Elam 
in  what  is  now  southern  Persia  that  a  cultural 
connection  seems  definitely  established. 

If  from  Egypt  we  turn  to  the  most  probable 
source  of  alien  culture  elements  found  there,  viz., 
to  the  region  of  Mesopotamia,  possibly  the  oldest 
seat  of  higher  civilization  in  Asia,  we  find  again 
that  the  culture  of  Babylonia  under  the  famous 
lawgiver  Hammurabi  (about  2,000  b.  c.)  is  not 
the  product  of  purely  indigenous  growth  but  rep- 
resents the  resultant  of  at  least  two  components, 
that  of  the  Sumerian  civilization  of  southern 
Babylonia  and  the  Accadian  culture  of  the 
North.  It  is  certain  that  the  Accadians  adopted 
the  art  of  writing  from  the  Sumerians  and  were 
also  stimulated  by  this  contact  in  their  artistic 
development.  The  evolution  of  Sumerian  civili- 
zation is  lost  in  obscurity  but  on  the  basis  of  well- 
established  historical  cases  we  should  hesitate  to 
assign  to  them  an  exclusively  creative,  and  to 
other  populations  an  exclusively  receptive,  role. 
[74I 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

We  may  quite  safely  assume  that  the  early 
splendor  of  Sumerian  civilization  was  also  in 
large  part  due  to  stimuli  received  through  foreign 
relations.  That  cultural  elements  of  value  may 
be  borrowed  from  an  inferior  as  well  as  from  a 
higher  level,  has  already  been  exemplified  by  the 
case  of  maize.  It  is  also,  among  other  things, 
illustrated  by  the  history  of  the  Chinese. 

The  Chinese  have  generally  been  represented 
as  developing  in  complete  isolation  from  other 
peoples.  This  traditional  conception,  however, 
breaks  down  with  more  intimate  knowledge.  Dr. 
Laufer  has  demonstrated  that  Chinese  civiliza- 
tion, too,  is  a  complex  structure  due  to  the  con- 
flux of  distinct  cultural  streams.  As  an  originally 
inland  people  inhabiting  the  middle  and  lower 
course  of  the  Yellow  River,  they  gradually 
reached  the  coast  and  acquired  the  art  of  naviga- 
tion through  contact  with  Indo-Chinese  sea- 
farers. Acquaintance  with  the  northern  nomads 
of  Turkish  and  Tungus  stock  led  to  the  use  of  the 
horse,  donkey  and  camel,  as  well  as  the  practice 
of  felt  and  rug  weaving,  possibly  even  to  the 
adoption  of  furniture  and  the  iron  technique.^ 
Most  important  of  all,  it  appears  that  essentials 
of  agriculture,  cattle-raising,  metallurgy  and  pot- 
tery, as  well  as  less  tangible  features  of  civiliza- 
tion are  common  to  ancient  China  and  Baby- 
[75] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

Ionia,  which  forces  us  to  the  conclusion  that  both 
the  Chinese  and  Babylonian  cultures  are  rami- 
fications from  a  common  Asiatic  sub-stratum. 
It  would  be  idle  to  speculate  as  to  the  relative 
contributions  of  each  center  to  this  ancient 
cultural  stock.  The  essential  point  is  that  the 
most  ancient  Asiatic  civilizations  of  which  we 
have  any  evidence  already  indicate  close  contact 
of  peoples  and  the  dispersal  of  cultural  elements. 

Contact  of  peoples  is  thus  an  extraordinary 
promoter  of  cultural  development.  By  the  free 
exchange  of  arts  and  ideas  among  a  group  of 
formerly  independent  peoples,  a  superiority  and 
complexity  is  rendered  possible  which  without 
such  diffusion  would  never  have  occurred.  The 
part  played  in  this  process  by  the  cruder  popu- 
lations must  not  be  underestimated.  They  may 
contribute  both  actively  and  passively;  actively, 
by  transmitting  knowledge  independently  ac- 
quired, as  in  the  case  of  the  felt  technique  the 
Chinese  learned  from  the  northern  nomads; 
passively,  by  forming  a  lower  caste  on  which  the 
economic  labors  devolve  and  thus  liberating 
their  conquerors  for  an  enlarged  activity  in  the 
less  utilitarian  spheres  of  culture. 

Nevertheless,  before  peoples  can  communicate 
their  cultures  to  others  with  whom  they  come  in- 
to contact,  they  must  first  evolve  these  cultures. 
[76] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

The  question  thus  remains,  What  determines  this 
evolution?  In  order  to  gain  a  proper  perspective 
in  this  matter,  we  must  for  a  moment  consider 
the  progress  of  human  civilization  as  a  whole. 
Archaeological  research  shows  that  the  modern 
era  of  steel  and  iron  tools  was  preceded  by  an 
age  of  bronze  and  copper  implements,  which  in 
turn  was  preceded  by  a  stone  age  subdivided 
into  a  more  recent  period  of  polished,  and  an 
earlier  of  merely  chipped,  stone  tools.  Now  the 
chronological  relations  of  these  epochs  are  ex- 
tremely suggestive.  The  very  lowest  estimate 
by  any  competent  observer  of  the  age  of  Palaeo- 
lithic man  in  Europe  sets  it  at  50,000  years  ;^ 
since  this  is  avowedly  the  utmost  minimum  value 
that  can  be  assigned  on  geological  grounds,  we 
may  reasonably  assume  twice  that  figure  for  the 
age  of  human  culture  generally.  Using  the  rough 
estimate  permissible  in  discussions  of  this  sort, 
we  may  regard  the  end  of  the  Palaeolithic  era  as 
dating  back  about  15,000  years  ago.  In  short, 
for  more  than  eight-tenths  of  its  existence,  the 
human  species  remained  at  a  cultural  level  at 
best  comparable  with  that  of  the  Australian. 
We  may  assume  that  it  was  during  this  immense 
space  of  time  that  dispersal  over  the  face  of  the 
globe  took  place  and  that  isolation  fixed  the 
broader  diversities  of  language  and  culture,  over 
177  ] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

and  above  what  may  have  been  the  persisting 
cultural  sub-stratum  common  to  the  earliest  un- 
divided human  group.  The  following  Neolithic 
period  of  different  parts  of  the  globe  terminated 
at  different  times  and  had  not  been  passed  at  all 
by  most  of  the  American  aborigines  and  the 
Oceanians  at  the  time  of  their  discovery.  How- 
ever, from  the  broader  point  of  view  here  as- 
sumed, it  was  not  relieved  by  the  age  of  metal- 
lurgy until  an  exceedingly  recent  past.  The  earli- 
est estimate  I  have  seen  does  not  put  the  event 
back  farther  than  6000  B.  c.  even  in  Mesopo- 
tamia. During  nine-tenths  of  his  existence,  then, 
man  was  ignorant  of  the  art  of  smelting  copper 
from  the  ore.  Finally,  the  iron  technique  does 
not  date  back  4,000  years;  it  took  humanity 
ninety-six  hundredths  of  its  existence  to  develop 
this  art. 

We  may  liken  the  progress  of  mankind  to  that 
of  a  man  a  hundred  years  old,  who  dawdles 
through  kindergarten  for  eighty-five  years  of  his 
life,  takes  ten  years  to  go  through  .the  primary 
grades,  then  rushes  with  lightning  rapidity 
through  grammar  school,  high  school  and  col- 
lege. Culture,  it  seems,  is  a  matter  of  exceedingly 
slow  growth  until  a  certain  'threshold'  is  passed, 
when  it  darts  forward,  gathering  momentum  at 
an  unexpected  rate.  For  this  peculiarity  of 
I78I 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

culture  as  a  whole,  many  miniature  parallels  ex- 
ist in  special  subdivisions  of  culture  history. 
Natural  science  lay  dormant  until  Kepler,  Gali- 
leo and  Newton  stirred  it  into  unexampled  activ- 
ity, and  the  same  holds  for  applied  science  until 
about  a  century  ago. 

This  discontinuity  of  development  receives 
strong  additional  illustration  from  a  survey  of 
special  subdivisions  of  ancient  culture.  Though 
the  Palaeolithic  era  certainly  preceded  the  later 
Stone  Age,  archaeologists  have  hitherto  failed  to 
show  the  steps  by  which  the  later  could  develop 
out  of  the  earlier.  This  gap  may,  of  course,  be 
due  merely  to  our  lack  of  knowledge.  Yet  when 
we  take  subdivisions  of  the  Palaeolithic  period, 
the  same  fact  once  more  confronts  us.  There  is 
no  orderly  progression  from  Solutrean  to  Magda- 
lenian  times.  The  highly  developed  flint  tech- 
nique of  the  former  dwindles  away  in  the  latter 
and  its  place  is  taken  by  what  seems  a  sponta- 
neous generation  of  bone  and  ivory  work,  with  a 
high  development  of  realistic  art. 

In  view  of  the  evidence,  it  seems  perfect  non- 
sense to  say  that  early  European  civilization,  by 
some  law  inherent  in  the  very  nature  of  culture, 
developed  in  the  way  indicated  by  archaeological 
finds.  Southern  Scandinavia  could  not  possibly 
have  had  a  bronze  age  without  alien  influence. 
[79] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

In  this  case,  discontinuity  was  the  result  of 
cultural  contact.  It  may  be  that  the  lack  of 
definite  direction  observed  throughout  the  Stone 
Age  may  in  part  be  due  to  similar  causes,  the 
migrations  and  contact  of  different  peoples,  as 
Professor  Sollas  suggests.  But  it  is  important  to 
note  that  discontinuity  is  a  necessary  feature  of 
cultural  progress.  It  does  not  matter  whether 
we  can  determine  the  particular  point  in  the 
series  at  which  the  significant  trait  was  intro- 
duced. It  does  not  matter  whether,  as  I  have 
suggested  in  the  discussion  of  racial  features,  the 
underlying  causes  of  the  phenomena  proceed  with 
perfect  continuity.  Somewhere  in  the  observed 
cultural  effects  there  is  the  momentous  innova- 
tion that  leads  to  a  definite  break  with  the  past. 
From  a  broad  point  of  view,  for  example,  it  is 
immaterial  whether  the  doctrine  of  evolution 
clings  to  the  name  of  the  younger  or  the  elder 
Darwin,  to  Lamarck  or  St.  Hilaire;  the  essential 
thing  is  that  somehow  the  idea  originated,  and 
that  when  it  had  taken  root  it  produced  incal- 
culable results  in  modern  thought. 

If  culture,  even  when  uninfluenced  by  foreign 
contact,  progresses  by  leaps  and  bounds,  we 
should  naturally  like  to  ascertain  the  determi- 
nants of  such  'mutations.'  In  this  respect,  the 
discontinuity  of  indigenous  evolution  differs 
[80] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

somewhat  from  that  connected  with  cultural  de- 
velopment due  to  diffusion.  It  was  absolutely 
impossible  that  Scandinavia  should  produce 
bronze  in  the  absence  of  tin.  But  a  priori  it  is 
conceivable  that  an  undisturbed  culture  might 
necessarily  develop  by  what  biologists  call  'or- 
thogenetic  evolution',  i.e.,  in  a  definite  direction 
through  definite  stages.  This  is,  indeed,  what  is 
commonly  known  as  the  classical  scheme  of 
cultural  evolution,  of  which  men  like  Morgan  are 
the  protagonists.  Now,  how  do  the  observed 
facts  square  with  this  theoretical  possibility? 

As  Professor  Boas  and  American  ethnologists 
generally  have  maintained,^"  many  facts  are  quite 
inconsistent  with  the  theory  of  unilinear  evolu- 
tion. That  theory  can  be  tested  very  simply  by 
comparing  the  sequence  of  events  in  two  or  more 
areas  in  which  independent  development  has 
taken  place.  For  example,  has  technology  in 
Africa  followed  the  lines  ascertained  for  ancient 
Europe?  We  know  today  that  it  has  not. 
Though  unlike  southern  Scandinavia,  the  Dark 
Continent  is  not  lacking  in  copper  deposits,  the 
African  Stone  Age  was  not  superseded  by  a  Cop- 
per Age,  but  directly  by  a  period  of  Iron.  Simi- 
larly, I  have  already  pointed  out  that  the  posses- 
sion of  the  same  domesticated  animals  does  not 
produce  the  same  economic  utilization  of  them 
[81] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

while  the  Tungus  rides  his  reindeer,  other  Si- 
berians harness  their  animals  to  a  sledge;  the 
Chinaman  will  not  milk  his  cattle,  while  the 
Zulu's  diet  consists  largely  of  milk.  That  a  par- 
ticular innovation  occurred  at  a  given  time  and 
place  is,  of  course,  no  less  the  result  of  definite 
causes  than  any  other  phenomenon  of  the  uni- 
verse. But  often  it  seems  to  have  been  caused 
by  an  accidental  complex  of  conditions  rather 
than  in  accordance  with  some  fixed  principle. 

For  example,  the  invention  of  the  wheel  revo- 
lutionized methods  of  transportation.  Now,  why 
did  this  idea  develop  in  the  Old  World  and  never 
take  root  among  the  American  Indians?  We  are 
here  face  to  face  with  one  of  those  ultimate  data 
that  must  simply  be  accepted  like  the  physicist's 
fact  that  water  expands  in  freezing  while  other 
substances  contract.  So  far  as  we  can  see,  the 
invention  might  have  been  made  in  America  as 
well  as  not;  and  for  all  we  know  it  would  never 
have  been  made  there  until  the  end  of  time. 
This  introduces  a  very  important  consideration. 
A  given  culture  is,  in  a  measure,  at  least,  a  unique 
phenomenon.  In  so  far  as  this  is  true  it  must 
defy  generalized  treatment,  and  the  explanation 
of  a  cultural  phenomenon  will  consist  in  referring 
it  back  to  the  particular  circumstances  that  pre- 
ceded it.  In  other  words,  the  explanation  will 
[82 1 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

consist  in  a  recital  of  its  past  history;  or,  to  put 
it  negatively,  it  cannot  involve  the  assumption  of 
an  organic  law  of  cultural  evolution  that  would 
necessarily  produce  the  observed  effect. 

Facts  already  cited  in  other  connections  may 
be  quoted  again  by  way  of  illustration.  When  a 
copper  implement  is  fashioned  not  according  to 
the  requirements  of  the  material,  but  in  direct 
imitation  of  preexisting  stone  patterns,  we  have 
an  instance  of  cultural  inertia:  it  is  only  the  past 
history  of  technology  that  renders  the  phenom- 
ena conceivable.  So  the  unwieldy  Chukchee 
tent,  which  adheres  to  the  style  of  a  pre-nomadic 
existence,  is  explained  as  soon  as  the  past  history 
of  the  tribe  comes  to  light. 

Phenomena  that  persist  in  isolation  from  their 
original  context  are  technically  known  as  'sur- 
vivals', and  form  one  of  the  most  interesting 
chapters  of  ethnology.  One  or  two  additional 
examples  will  render  their  nature  still  clearer. 
The  boats  of  the  Vikings  were  equipped  for  row- 
ing as  well  as  for  sailing.  Why  the  superfluous 
appliances  for  rowing,  which  were  later  dropped? 
As  soon  as  we  learn  that  the  Norse  boats  were 
originally  rowboats  and  that  sails  were  a  later 
addition,  the  rowing  equipment  is  placed  in  its 
proper  cultural  setting  and  the  problem  is  solved. 
Another  example  may  be  offered  from  a  different 
[83] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

phase  of  life.  Among  the  Arapaho  Indians  there 
is  a  series  of  dance  organizations  graded  by  age. 
Membership  is  acquired  by  age-mates  at  the 
same  time,  each  receiving  the  requisite  ceremo- 
nial instructions  from  some  older  man  who  passed 
through  the  dance  in  his  day.  These  older  men, 
who  are  paid  for  their  services  by  the  candidates, 
may  belong  to  any  and  all  of  the  higher  organiza- 
tions. Oddly  enough,  each  group  of  dancers  is 
assisted  by  a  number  of  'elder  brothers',  all  of 
whom  rank  them  by  two  grades  in  the  series  of 
dancers.  This  feature  is  not  at  all  clear  from  the 
Arapaho  data  alone.  When,  however,  we  turn 
to  the  Hidatsa  Indians,  with  whom  there  is  evi- 
dence this  system  of  age-societies  originated,  we 
find  that  here  the  youngest  group  of  men  does 
not  buy  instructions  from  a  miscellaneous  as- 
semblage of  older  men,  but  buys  the  dance  out- 
right from  the  whole  of  the  second  grade;  this 
group,  in  order  to  have  the  privilege  of  perform- 
ing a  dance,  must  buy  that  of  the  third  grade,  and 
so  on.  In  all  these  purchases  the  selling  group 
seeks  to  extort  the  highest  possible  price  while 
the  buyers  try  to  get  off  as  cheaply  as  possible 
and  are  aided  by  the  second  higher  group,  i.e., 
the  group  just  ranking  the  sellers.  Here  the 
sophomore-senior  versus  freshman-junior  rela- 
tionship is  perfectly  intelligible ;  both  the  f resh- 
[84] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

man  and  the  junior,  to  pursue  the  analogy,  bear 
a  natural  economic  hostility  against  the  soph- 
omore, and  vice  versa.  The  Arapaho  usage  is 
intelligible  as  a  survival  from  this  earlier  Hidatsa 
condition. 

Our  own  civilization  is  shot  through  with  sur- 
vivals, so  that  further  illustrations  are  unneces- 
sary. They  suggest,  however,  another  aspect  of 
our  general  problem.  Of  course,  in  every  culture 
different  traits  are  linked  together  without  there 
being  any  essential  bond  between  them.  An  il- 
lustration of  this  type  of  association  is  that  men- 
tioned by  Dr.  Laufer  for  Asiatic  tribes,  viz.,  that 
all  nations  which  use  milk  for  their  diet  have  epic 
poems,  while  those  which  abstain  from  milk  have 
no  epic  literature.  This  type  of  chance  associa- 
tion, due  to  historical  causes,  has  been  discussed 
by  Dr.  Wissler"and  Professor  Czekanowski.^^  But 
survivals  show  that  there  may  be  an  organic  re- 
lation between  phenomena  that  have  become 
separated  and  are  treated  as  distinct  by  the  de- 
scriptive ethnologist.  In  such  cases,  one  trait  is 
the  determinant  of  the  other,  possibly  as  the 
actually  preceding  cause,  possibly  as  part  of  the 
same  phenomenon  in  the  sense  in  which  the  side 
of  a  triangle  is  correlated  with  an  angle. 

A  pair  of  illustrations  will  elucidate  the  matter. 
Primitive  terms  of  relationship  often  reveal  char- 
[85] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

acteristic  differences  of  connotation  from  their 
nearest  equivalents  in  European  languages.  On 
the  other  hand,  they  are  remarkably  similar  not 
only  among  many  of  the  North  American  Indians 
but  also  in  many  other  regions  of  the  globe,  such 
as  Australia,  Oceanica,  Africa.  The  most  strik- 
ing peculiarity  of  this  system  of  nomenclature 
lies  in  the  inclusiveness  of  certain  terms.  For 
example,  the  word  we  translate  as  'father'  is 
applied  indiscriminately  to  the  father,  all  his 
brothers,  and  some  of  his  male  cousins;  while 
the  word  for  'mother'  is  correspondingly  used  for 
the  mother's  sisters  and  some  of  their  female 
cousins.  On  the  other  hand,  paternal  and  mater- 
nal uncle  or  aunt  are  rigidly  distinguished  by  a 
difference  in  terminology.  As  Morgan  divined 
and  Tylor  clearly  recognized,  this  system  is  con- 
nected with  the  one-sided  exogamous  kin  organi- 
zation by  which  an  individual  is  reckoned  as  be- 
longing to  the  exogamous  social  group  of  one, 
and  only  one,  of  his  parents.  The  terminology 
that  appears  so  curious  at  first  blush  then  re- 
solves itself  very  simply  into  the  method  of 
calling  those  members  of  the  tribe  who  belong  to 
the  father's  social  group  and  generation  by  the 
same  term  as  the  father,  while  the  maternal 
uncles,  who  must  belong  to  another  group  be- 
cause of  the  exogamous  rule,  are  distinguished 
[86] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

from  the  father.  In  short,  the  terminology 
simply  expresses  the  existing  social  organization. 
In  a  world-wide  survey  of  the  field  Tylor  found 
that  the  number  of  peoples  who  use  the  type  of 
nomenclature  I  have  described  and  are  divided 
into  exogamous  groups,  is  about  three  times  that 
to  be  expected  on  the  doctrine  of  chances:  in 
other  words,  the  two  apparently  distinct  phe- 
nomena are  causally  connected. ^^  This  interpreta- 
tion has  recently  been  forcibly  advocated  by  Dr. 
Rivers,  and  I  have  examined  the  North  American 
data  from  this  point  of  view.  It  developed,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  that  practically  all  the  tribes  with 
exogamous  'clans',  i.e.,  matrilineal  kin  groups,  or 
exogamous  'gentes',  i.e.,  patrilineal  kin  groups, 
had  a  system  of  the  type  described,  while  most 
of  the  tribes  lacking  such  groups  also  lacked  the 
nomenclature  in  question.  Accordingly,  it  fol- 
lows that  there  is  certainly  a  functional  relation 
between  these  phenomena,  although  it  is  con- 
ceivable that  both  are  functionally  related  to  still 
other  phenomena,  and  that  the  really  significant 
relationship  remains  to  be  determined. 

As  a  linked  illustration,  the  following  phenom- 
ena may  be  presented.  Among  the  Crow  of 
Montana,  the  Hopi  of  Arizona,  and  some  Mela- 
nesian  tribes,  the  same  term  is  applied  to  a 
father's  sister  and  to  a  father's  sister's  daughter; 
[87] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

indeed,  among  the  Crow  and  the  Hopi  the  term 
is  extended  to  all  the  female  descendants  through 
females  of  the  father's  sister  ad  infinitum.  Such 
a  usage  is  at  once  intelligible  from  the  tendency 
to  call  females  of  the  father's  group  belonging  to 
his  and  younger  generations  by  a  single  term,  re- 
gardless of  generation,  if  descent  is  reckoned 
through  the  mother,  for  in  that  case,  and  that 
case  only,  will  the  individuals  in  question  belong 
to  the  same  group.  And  the  fact  is  that  in  each 
of  the  cases  mentioned,  group  affiliation  is  traced 
through  the  mother,  while  I  know  of  not  a  single 
instance  in  which  paternal  descent  coexists  with 
the  nomenclatorial  disregard  of  generations  in 
the  form  described. 

My  instances  show,  then,  that  cultural  traits 
may  be  functionally  related,  and  this  fact  renders 
possible  a  parallelism,  however  limited,  of  cul- 
tural development  in  different  parts  of  the  globe. 
The  field  of  culture,  then,  is  not  a  region  of  com- 
plete lawlessness.  Like  causes  produce  like  effects 
here  as  elsewhere,  though  the  complex  condi- 
tions with  which  we  are  grappling  require  unusu- 
al caution  in  definitely  correlating  phenomena. 
It  is  true  that  American  ethnologists  have  shown 
that  in  several  instances  like  phenomena  can 
be  traced  to  diverse  causes;  that,  in  short,  un- 
like antecedents  converge  to  the  same  point. 
[88] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

However,  at  the  risk  of  being  anathematized  as  a 
person  of  utterly  unhistorical  mentaHty,  I  must 
register  my  belief  that  this  point  has  been  over- 
done and  that  the  continued  insistence  on  it  by 
Americanists  is  itself  an  illustration  of  cultural 
inertia.  Indeed,  the  vast  majority  of  so-called 
convergencies  are  not  genuine,  but  false  analogies 
due  to  our  throwing  together  diverse  facts  from 
ignorance  of  their  true  nature,  just  as  an  un- 
tutored mind  will  class  bats  with  birds,  or  whales 
with  fish.  When,  however,  rather  full  knowledge 
reveals  not  superficial  resemblance  but  absolute 
identity  of  cultural  features,  it  would  be  mirac- 
ulous, indeed,  to  assume  that  such  equivalence 
somehow  was  shaped  by  different  determinants. 
When  a  Zulu  of  South  Africa,  an  Australian,  and 
a  Crow  Indian  all  share  the  mother-in-law  taboo 
imposing  mutual  avoidance  on  the  wife's  mother 
and  the  daughter's  husband,  with  exactly  the 
same  psychological  correlate,  it  is,  to  my  mind, 
rash  to  decree  without  attempt  to  produce  evi- 
dence that  this  custom  must,  in  each  case,  have 
developed  from  entirely  distinct  motives.  To  be 
sure,  this  particular  usage  has  not  yet,  in  my 
opinion,  been  satisfactorily  accounted  for.  Nev- 
ertheless, in  contradistinction  to  some  of  my  col- 
leagues and  to  the  position  I  myself  once  shared, 
I  now  believe  that  it  is  pusillanimous  to  shirk 
[89] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

the  real  problem  involved,  and  that  in  so  far  as 
any  explanation  admits  the  problem,  any  ex- 
planation is  preferable  to  the  flaunting  of  fine 
phrases  about  the  unique  character  of  cultural 
phenomena.  When,  however,  we  ask  what  sort 
of  explanation  could  be  given,  we  find  that  it  is 
by  necessity  a  cultural  explanation.  Tylor,  e.g., 
thinks  that  the  custom  is  correlated  with  the 
social  rule  that  the  husband  takes  up  his  abode 
with  the  wife's  relatives  and  that  the  taboo 
merely  marks  the  difference  between  him  and  the 
rest  of  the  family.  We  have  here  clearly  one 
cultural  phenomenon  as  the  determinant  of 
another. 

It  is  not  so  difficult  as  might  at  first  appear  to 
harmonize  the  principle  that  a  cultural  phenom- 
enon is  explicable  only  by  a  unique  combination 
of  antecedent  circumstances  with  the  principle 
that  like  phenomena  are  the  product  of  like  ante- 
cedents. The  essential  point  is  that  in  either 
case  we  have  past  history  as  the  determinant. 
It  is  not  necessary  that  certain  things  should 
happen ;  but  if  they  do  happen,  then  there  is  at 
least  a  considerable  likelihood  that  certain  other 
things  will  also  happen.  Diversity  occurs  where 
the  particular  thing  of  importance,  say  the  wheel, 
has  been  discovered  or  conceived  in  one  region 
but  not  in  another.  Parallelism  tends  to  occur 
[90] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

when  the  same  significant  phenomenon  is  shared 
by  distinct  cultures.  It  remains  true  that  in 
culture  history  we  are  generally  wise  after  the 
event.  A  priori,  who  would  not  expect  that 
milking  must  follow  from  the  domestication  of 
cattle? 

When  we  find  that  a  type  of  kinship  terminol- 
ogy is  determined  by  exogamy  or  matrilineal 
descent,  we  have,  indeed,  given  a  cultural  ex- 
planation of  a  cultural  fact;  but  for  the  ultimate 
problems  how  exogamy  or  maternal  descent  came 
about,  we  may  be  unable  to  give  a  solution.  Very 
often  we  cannot  ascertain  an  anterior  or  corre- 
lated cultural  fact  for  another  cultural  fact,  but 
can  merely  group  it  with  others  of  the  same  kind. 
Of  this  order  are  many  of  the  parallels  that  figure 
so  prominently  in  ethnological  literature.  For 
example,  that  primitive  man  everywhere  be- 
lieves in  the  animation  of  nature  seems  an  irre- 
ducible datum  which  we  can,  indeed,  paraphrase 
and  turn  hither  and  thither  for  clearer  scrutiny 
but  can  hardly  reduce  to  simpler  terms.  All  we 
can  do  is  to  merge  any  particular  example  of  such 
animism  in  the  general  class  after  the  fashion  of 
all  scientific  interpretation.  That  certain  ten- 
dencies of  all  but  universal  occurrence  are  char- 
acteristic of  culture,  no  fair  observer  can  deny, 
and  it  is  the  manifest  business  of  ethnology  to 
[91] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

ascertain  all  such  regularities  so  that  as  many 
cultural  phenomena  as  possible  may  fall  into 
their  appropriate  categories.  Only  those  who 
would  derive  each  and  every  trait  similar  in  dif- 
ferent communities  of  human  beings  from  a 
single  geographical  source  can  ignore  such  gen- 
eral characteristics  of  culture,  which  may,  in  a 
sense,  be  regarded  £is  determinants  of  specific 
cultural  data  or  rather,  as  the  principles  of 
which  these  are  particular  manifestations. 

Recently  I  completed  an  investigation  of 
Plains  Indian  societies  begun  on  the  most  rigor- 
ous of  historical  principles,  with  a  distinct  bias  in 
favor  of  the  unique  character  of  cultural  data. 
But  after  smiting  hip  and  thigh  the  assumption 
that  the  North  American  societies  were  akin  to 
analogous  institutions  in  Africa  and  elsewhere,  I 
came  face  to  face  with  the  fact  that,  after  all, 
among  the  Plains  Indians,  as  among  other  tribes, 
the  tendency  of  age-mates  to  flock  together  had 
formed  social  organizations  and  thus  acted  as  a 
cultural  determinant. 

Beyond  such  interpretative  principles  for 
special  phases  of  civilization,  there  are  still 
broader  generalizations  of  cultural  phenomena. 
One  has  been  repeatedly  alluded  to  under  the 
caption  of  cultural  inertia,  or  survival — the 
irrational  persistence  of  a  feature  when  the 
[92] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

context  in  which  it  had  a  place  has  vanished. 
But  culture  is  not  merely  a  passive  phenomenon 
but  a  dynamic  one  as  well.  This  is  strikingly 
illustrated  in  the  assimilation  of  an  alien  cultural 
stimulus.  As  I  have  already  pointed  out,  it  is 
not  sufficient  to  bring  two  cultures  into  contact 
in  order  to  have  a  perfect  cultural  interpenetra- 
tion.  The  element  of  selection  enters  in  a  signifi- 
cant way.  Not  everything  that  is  offered  by  a 
foreign  culture  is  borrowed.  The  Japanese  have 
accepted  our  technology  but  not  our  religion 
and  etiquette.  Moreover,  what  is  accepted  may 
undergo  a  very  considerable  change.  While  the 
whole  range  of  phenomena  is  extremely  wide  and 
cannot  be  dismissed  with  a  few  words,  it  appears 
fairly  clear  that  generally  the  preexisting  culture 
at  once  seizes  upon  a  foreign  element  and  models 
it  in  accordance  with  the  native  pattern.  Thus, 
the  Crow  Indians,  who  had  had  a  pair  of  rival 
organizations,  borrowed  a  society  from  the 
Hidatsa  where  such  rivalry  did  not  exist. 
Straightway,  the  Crow  imposed  on  the  new 
society  their  own  conception,  and  it  became  the 
competitor  of  another  of  their  organizations. 
Similarly  the  Pawnee  have  a  highly  developed 
star  cult.  Their  folklore  is  in  many  regards 
similar  to  that  of  other  Plains  tribes,  from  which 
some  tales  have  undoubtedly  been  borrowed. 
[93] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

Yet  in  the  borrowing  these  stories  became 
changed  and  the  same  episodes  which  elsewhere 
relate  to  human  heroes  now  receive  an  astral 
setting.  The  preexisting  cultural  pattern  syn- 
thetizes  the  new  element  with  its  own  precon- 
ceptions. 

Another  tendency  that  is  highly  characteristic 
of  all  cultures  is  the  rationalistic  explanation  of 
what  reason  never  gave  rise  to.  This  is  shown 
very  clearly  in  the  justification  of  existing 
cultural  features  or  of  opinions  acquired  as  a 
member  of  a  particular  society.  Hegel's  notion 
that  whatever  exists  is  rational  and  Pope's 
'whatever  is,  is  right'  have  their  parallels  in 
primitive  legend  and  the  literature  of  religious 
and  political  partisanship.  In  the  special  form 
of  justification  employed  we  find  again  the 
determining  influence  of  the  surrounding  cul- 
tural atmosphere.  Among  the  Plains  Indians 
almost  everything  is  explained  as  the  result  of 
supernatural  revelation ;  if  a  warrior  has  escaped 
injury  in  battle  it  is  because  he  wore  a  feather 
bestowed  on  him  in  a  vision;  if  he  acquires  a 
large  herd  of  horses  it  is  in  fulfilment  of  a  spiri- 
tistic communication  during  the  fast  of  adoles- 
cence. In  a  community  where  explanations  of 
this  type  hold  sway,  we  are  not  surprised  to  find 
that  the  origin  of  rites,  too,  is  almost  uniformly 
[94] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

traced  to  a  vision  and  that  even  the  most  trivial 
alteration  in  ceremonial  garb  is  not  claimed  as 
an  original  invention  but  ascribed  to  super- 
natural promptings.  Thus,  the  existing  culture 
acts  doubly  as  the  determinant  of  the  explana- 
tion offered  for  a  particular  cultural  phenomenon. 
It  evokes  the  search  for  its  own  raison  d'etre; 
and  the  type  of  interpretation  called  forth  con- 
forms to  the  explanatory  pattern  characteristic 
of  the  culture  involved. 

Culture  thus  appears  as  a  closed  system. 
We  may  not  be  able  to  explain  all  cultural 
phenomena  or  at  least  not  beyond  a  certain 
point;  but  inasmuch  as  we  can  explain  them  at 
all,  explanation  must  remain  on  the  cultural 
plane. 

What  are  the  determinants  of  culture?  We 
have  found  that  cultural  traits  may  be  trans- 
mitted from  without  and  in  so  far  forth  are 
determined  by  the  culture  of  an  alien  people. 
The  extraordinary  extent  to  which  such  diffusion 
has  taken  place  proves  that  the  actual  develop- 
ment of  a  given  culture  does  not  conform  to 
innate  laws  necessarily  leading  to  definite 
results,  such  hypothetical  laws  being  overridden 
by  contact  with  foreign  peoples.  But  even 
where  a  culture  is  of  relatively  indigenous  growth 
comparison  with  other  cultures  suggests  that 
[951 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

one  step  does  not  necessarily  lead  to  another, 
that  an  invention  like  the  wheel  or  the  domesti- 
cation of  an  animal  occurs  in  one  place  and  does 
not  occur  in  another.  To  the  extent  of  such 
diversity  we  must  abandon  the  quest  for  general 
formulae  of  cultural  evolution  and  recognize  as 
the  determinant  of  a  phenomenon  the  unique 
course  of  its  past  history.  However,  there  is  not 
merely  discontinuity  and  diversity  but  also 
stability  and  agreement  in  the  sphere  of  culture. 
The  discrete  steps  that  mark  culture  history  may 
not  determine  one  another,  but  each  may 
involve  as  a  necessary  or  at  least  probable  con- 
sequence other  phenomena  which  in  many 
instances  are  simply  new  aspects  of  the  same 
phenomenon,  and  in  so  far  forth  one  cultural 
element  as  isolated  in  description  is  the  deter- 
minant or  correlate  of  another.  As  for  those 
phenomena  which  we  are  obliged  to  accept  as 
realities  without  the  possibility  of  further  analy- 
sis, we  can,  at  least,  classify  a  great  number  of 
them  and  merge  particular  instances  in  a  group 
of  similar  facts.  Finally,  there  are  dominant 
characteristics  of  culture,  like  cultural  inertia  or 
the  secondary  rationalization  of  habits  acquired 
irrationally  by  the  members  of  a  group,  which 
serve  as  broad  interpretative  principles  in  the 
history  of  civilization. 

[96] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

In  short,  as  in  other  sciences,  so  in  ethnology 
there  are  ultimate,  irreducible  facts,  special  func- 
tional relations,  and  principles  of  wider  scope 
that  guide  us  through  the  chaotic  maze  of  detail. 
And  as  the  engineer  calls  on  the  physicist  for  a 
knowledge  of  mechanical  laws,  so  the  social 
builder  of  the  future  who  should  seek  to  re- 
fashion the  culture  of  his  time  and  add  to  its 
cultural  values  will  seek  guidance  from  eth- 
nology, the  science  of  culture,  which  in  Tylor's 
judgment  is  'essentially  a  reformer's  science.' 


l97. 


V.  TERMS  OF  RELATIONSHIP 

Most  descriptive  monographs  on  primitive 
tribes  contain  lists  of  the  words  with  which  the 
natives  designate  their  relatives  by  blood  and 
marriage.  The  reason  is  far  from  obvious.  Why 
should  not  this  topic  be  left  in  the  hands  of  a 
linguist-lexicographer?  It  is  true  that  primitive 
usage  in  this  regard  is  very  quaint  from  our  point 
of  view,  but  so  are  primitive  conceptions  on  a 
variety  of  subjects  that  likewise  find  expression 
in  speech.  The  refinement  of  spatial  distinctions 
in  North  American  languages,  the  classification 
of  colors  or  animals  or  other  groups  of  natural 
phenomena  are  of  equal  intrinsic  interest  from  a 
psychological  point  of  view.  Why,  then,  single 
out  a  particular  department  of  the  aboriginal 
vocabulary  in  a  treatise  on  culture?  The  answer 
is  simply  this,  that  kinship  terms  have  a  direct 
relation  to  cultural  data. 

The  very  fact  that  primitive  tribes  frequently 
use  terms  of  kinship  as  words  of  address  where 
we  should  substitute  personal  names  is  a  social 
practice  of  ethnological  interest.  But  the  essen- 
tial point  is  that  the  terms  used  are  often  very 
definitely  correlated  with  specific  social  usages. 
Generally  speaking,  the  use  of  distinct  words  for 
[98 1 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

two  types  of  relatives  is  connected  with  a  real 
difference  in  their  social  relations  to  the  speaker. 
Thus,  a  majority  of  primitive  tribes  draw  no  dis- 
tinction between  the  father's  sister's  daughter 
and  the  mother's  brother's  daughter.  But  among 
the  Miwok  of  California,  where  one  of  the 
cousins  may  be  married  while  the  other  is  within 
the  prohibited  degrees,  a  discrimination  is  made 
in  language.  Again,  in  many  regions  of  the  globe 
an  altogether  special  bond  connects  the  maternal 
uncle  with  the  sister's  son,  and  accordingly  we 
find  that  he  is  very  often  sharply  distinguished 
from  the  paternal  uncle  in  nomenclature. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  can  often  explain  very 
naturally  the  use  of  a  single  word  for  two  or  more 
relatives  whom  we  designate  by  as  many  distinct 
words.  The  Vedda  of  Ceylon,  for  example,  call 
the  man's  father-in-law  and  maternal  uncle  by 
the  same  term.  The  reason  is  that  here  a  man 
commonly  marries  his  mother's  brother's  daugh- 
ter; the  mother's  brother  is  his  father-in-law, 
and  this  identity  is  expressed  in  the  terminology. 
A  different  illustration  is  supplied  by  the  Crow 
of  Montana,  who  have  one  term  for  the  man's 
mother-in-law  and  his  wife's  brother's  wife.  The 
simple  explanation  is  that  both  stand  to  him  in 
the  relationship  of  mutual  avoidance,  and  it  is 
this  social  fact  that  is  expressed  by  the  common 
[99] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

designation.  The  same  Indians  apply  the  word 
for  'father'  in  a  very  inclusive  manner,  possibly 
to  dozens  of  individuals;  but  closer  examination 
shows  that  all  of  the  people  so  addressed  are  en- 
titled to  the  same  kind  of  treatment  by  the 
speaker,  to  a  peculiar  form  of  reverence,  and  to 
a  preferential  rank  in  the  distribution  of  gifts. 

These  few  and  casual  examples  possibly  suffice 
to  show  why  kinship  terms  deserve  the  ethnol- 
ogist's attention.  Terms  of  relationship  are,  in 
some  measure,  indices  of  social  usage.  Where 
relatives  whom  other  people  distinguish  are 
grouped  together,  there  is  some  likelihood  that 
the  natives  regard  them  as  representing  the  same 
relationship  because  they  actually  enjoy  the  same 
privileges  or  exercise  the  same  functions  in  tribal 
life.  Where  relatives  whom  other  peoples  group 
together  are  distinguished,  there  is  some  proba- 
bility that  the  distinction  goes  hand  in  hand  with 
a  difference  in  social  function. 

Lewis  H.  Morgan,  the  pioneer  in  this  domain 
of  knowledge,  was  keenly  alive  to  the  social  im- 
plications of  kinship  nomenclature.  But  while 
he  endeavored  to  give  an  ultimate  interpretation 
of  it  in  terms  of  various  social  conditions,  he  was 
confronted  with  the  fact  that  not  every  tribe 
had  a  terminology  sui  generis,  but  that  nomen- 
clatures of  remote  peoples  were  sometimes  mar- 

[lOO] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

velously  similar.  Morgan  boldly  argued  that 
such  community  of  nomenclature  established  ulti- 
mate racial  unity  and  on  this  ground  coolly 
suggested  a  racial  connection  between  the  Ha- 
waiians  and  the  South  African  Zulu,  between  the 
natives  of  India  and  those  of  the  Western 
Hemisphere.^ 

These  speculations  as  to  racial  affinity  have 
been  rightly  disregarded  by  later  students,  be- 
cause to  accept  Morgan's  premises  means  run- 
ning counter  to  the  most  obvious  facts  of  physical 
anthropology.  As  Lubbock  pointed  out,  we  can- 
not assume  that  the  Two-Mountain  Iroquois  are 
more  closely  akin  to  remote  Oceanians  than  to 
their  fellow  Iroquois  because  some  of  their  kin- 
ship terms  resemble  in  connotation  those  of  the 
Hawaiians.  Nevertheless,  Morgan  was  right  in 
feeling  that  some  historical  conclusions  could  be 
drawn  from  similarities  of  relationship  nomen- 
clature. We  must  simply  bring  this  particular 
group  of  ethnological  data  under  the  same  prin- 
ciple as  other  cultural  phenomena.  When  the 
same  feature  occurs  within  a  definite  continuous 
region,  we  shall  assume  that  it  has  developed  in 
a  single  center  and  spread  by  borrowing  to  other 
parts  of  the  area.  When  the  same  feature  occurs 
in  disconnected  regions,  we  shall  incline  to  the 
theory  of  independent  development  and  shall  in- 

[lOl] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

quire  whether  the  course  of  evolution  may  have 
been  due  to  the  same  cultural  determinants,  i.e., 
in  this  case,  to  the  same  social  institutions. 

After  these  preliminary  remarks,  we  may  turn 
to  a  closer  scrutiny  of  the  facts. 

'Systems'.  Abstractly  considered,  it  is  con- 
ceivable that  every  individual  relative  might  be 
designated  by  a  different  term  of  relationship  by 
every  other  individual,  just  as  each  object  in 
nature  might  theoretically  be  defined  by  some 
distinctive  word  instead  of  being  placed  in  some 
such  category  as  'tree',  'animal',  or  'book'.  In- 
deed, primitive  people  go  rather  far  in  their 
distinctions.  Thus,  in  the  Menomini  family  circle 
boys  are  not  called  'son'  or  'brother',  but  each  is 
addressed  by  a  word  indicating  the  order  of  his 
birth,  the  oldest  being  'mudjikiwis',  the  second 
'osememau',  the  third  'akotcosememau',  the 
fourth  'nanaweo'.^  But  in  this,  as  in  every  other 
department  of  language,  economy  has  been  ex- 
ercised and  instead  of  a  chaotic  number  of  dis- 
tinct terms  for  every  possible  relationship,  there 
is  always  a  limited  series,  many  distinct  individ- 
ual relationships  being  always  grouped  together 
under  a  single  head.  Thus,  in  English  we  apply 
the  word  'brother'  to  a  number  of  individuals 
regardless  of  their  age  relatively  to  ourselves  or 
to  one  another  and  irrespective  of  the  sex  of  the 
[102] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

speaker.  Yet,  as  the  Menomini  instance  shows, 
the  age  distinction  might  very  well  have  been 
expressed  in  speech  and  there  are  many  Indian 
languages  in  which  one  set  of  terms  is  used  by 
female  and  another  by  male  speakers. 

All  the  terms  used  by  a  people  to  designate 
their  relatives  by  blood  or  marriage  are  jointly 
called  their  'kinship  system'.  This  phrase  is 
wholly  misleading,  if  it  is  understood  to  imply 
that  all  the  constituent  elements  form  a  well- 
articulated  whole,  for  this  probably  never  applies 
to  more  than  a  limited  number  of  them,  as  will 
appear  presently.  But  as  a  convenient  word  for 
the  entire  nomenclature  of  relationship  found  in 
a  particular  region  the  word  'system'  may  be 
provisionally  retained.  We  may  say,  then,  that 
systems  of  dififerent  peoples  vary  in  their  mode 
of  classifying  kin  and  it  seems  the  ethnographer's 
first  duty  to  determine  the  types  of  system  found 
and  their  geographical  distribution. 

At  the  present  moment  a  satisfactory  grouping 
of  the  world's  kinship  systems  is  impossible,  ow- 
ing to  our  lack  of  knowledge  of  many  areas.  The 
task  is  also  rendered  very  difficult  by  the  fre- 
quent coexistence  of  distinct  and  even  contra- 
dictory principles  in  the  same  'system'.  Each  of 
these  may  be  defined  separately,  but  to  weld 
both  or  all  of  them  into  a  unified  whole  defies 
1 103  ] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

our  efforts.  For  example,  the  Masai  of  East 
Africa,  in  referring  to  the  paternal  uncle,  simply 
combine  the  stems  for  'father',  baba,  and  'broth- 
er', alasche,  thus  forming  by  juxtaposition  of 
these  primary  terms  the  compound  expression 
ol  alasche  le  baba,  which  means  literally  'the 
brother  of  the  father'.  This  mode  of  defining  a 
relative's  status  by  combining  primary  terms  of 
relationship  or  a  primary  term  with  a  qualifying 
adjective  as  in  our  'grandfather',  is  technically 
known  as  'descriptive',  and  ethnologists  are 
wont  to  speak  of  descriptive  systems.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  this  descriptive  principle  is  highly 
characteristic  of  the  Masai — but  not  when  rel- 
atives are  directly  addressed  by  them.  In  such 
vocative  usage,  as  it  may  be  called,  the  father's 
brother  is  called  baba  like  the  father  himself;  the 
mother's  brother  is  not  designated  by  a  phrase 
composed  of  primary  stems  but  by  a  new  stem, 
abula,  which  is  also  used  reciprocally  for  the 
nephew;  while  koko  serves  to  call  both  a  pater- 
nal and  a  maternal  aunt.  These  connotations 
introduce  into  the  Masai  'system'  a  discordant 
principle  by  which  relatives,  instead  of 
being  defined  descriptively,  are  grouped  together 
in  classes.  But  this  'classificatory'  feature  by 
no  means  characterizes  all  the  vocative  nomen- 
clature. By  far  the  majority  of  relatives  are 
[104I 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

addressed  by  terms  suggestive  of  the  presents 
of  live  stock  presented  to  them  by  the  speaker; 
if  the  gift  consisted  of  a  bull,  the  word  used  is 
h-ainoni,  from  oinoni,  bull;  if  an  ass  was  given 
away,  the  vocative  term  is  ba-sigiria,  from  si- 
giria,  ass;  and  so  forth.  Accordingly,  the  voc- 
ative terms  cited  above  are  only  employed  by 
children,  who  have  not  yet  presented  stock  to 
their  kin.^  In  short,  Masai  terminology  is  molded 
by  at  least  three  entirely  disparate  principles. 

We  shall,  accordingly,  do  well  to  amend  our 
phraseology  and  to  speak  rather  of  kinship  cat- 
egories, features,  or  principles  of  classification 
than  of  types  of  kinship  systems. 

The  Descriptive  Principle.  When  we  approach 
our  subject  in  a  purely  empirical  way,  we  are 
confronted  with  the  fact  that  features  do  not,  as 
a  rule,  occur  sporadically  but  are  distributed  over 
continuous  areas.  Imperfect  as  is  our  knowledge 
of  African  systems,  for  example,  we  know  that 
the  descriptive  feature  of  the  Masai  nomen- 
clature does  not  appear  everywhere,  but  flour- 
ishes especially  among  East  African  tribes,  such 
as  the  Shilluk,  Dinka,  and  other  Upper  Nile  pop- 
ulations, and  perhaps  more  widely  where  Arabic 
influence  extends,  the  Arabian  terminology  being 
of  a  markedly  descriptive  character.  In  East 
Africa,  indeed,  there  is  almost  quantitative  proof 
I105] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

of  the  dependence  of  kinship  terminology  on  his- 
torical connection  and  geographical  proximity. 
Among  the  Baganda,  as  among  most  Bantu 
Negroes,  the  descriptive  feature  is  lacking  and 
such  a  relative  as  the  mother's  brother's  son,  in- 
stead of  being  designated  by  a  compound  expres- 
sion, is  classed  with  the  brother.*  The  Masai, 
who  live  surrounded  by  Bantu  tribes,  have  a 
purely  descriptive  system  for  non-vocative  usage 
but  their  vocative  forms  are  in  part  classificatory, 
while  some  neighboring  Bantu  peoples  have  a 
correspondingly  mixed  system.  The  Shilluk  and 
Dinka  seem  to  use  the  descriptive  principle  ex- 
clusively, as  do  the  Arabs.  The  Masai  are  un- 
doubtedly closely  allied  with  the  Nilotes  and 
markedly  different  from  the  Bantu.  The  con- 
clusion is,  therefore,  inevitable  that  their  termi- 
nology— whatever  may  be  its  ultimate  raison 
d'etre — is  a  function  of  their  historical  relations. 
They  have  descriptive  features  because  they  be- 
long to  a  group  of  peoples  of  whom  such  features 
are  characteristic.  They  have  classificatory  fea- 
tures because  they  have  come  into  contact  with 
peoples  whose  systems  were  characterized  by 
such  features  and  from  whom  they  have  bor- 
rowed them.  The  Shilluk  lack  the  classificatory 
principle  because  they  have  not  had  the  same 
alien  influences  as  the  Masai.  The  restriction  of 
[io6] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

descriptive  features  to  a  definite  part  of  Africa 
and  their  amalgamation  with  other  features  in 
the  marginal  section  of  this  area  show  that  kin- 
ship nomenclatures  follow  precisely  the  same 
rules  as  other  elements  of  culture  and  that  their 
distribution  indicates  probable  or  corroborates 
known,  tribal  relations. 

The  descriptive  principle  is  not  restricted  to 
East  Africa  and  the  Semitic  family,  but  has  been 
found  in  the  Persian,  Armenian,  Celtic,  Estho- 
nian,  and  Scandinavian  languages.^  Although 
guesses  might  be  offered,  I  do  not  feel  that  our 
present  knowledge  permits  definite  statements  as 
to  the  historical  relations  suggested  by  the  total 
range  of  the  descriptive  principle  on  the  face  of 
the  globe. 

The  Hawaiian  Principle.  While  the  term  'de- 
scriptive' admits  of  a  fairly  unambiguous  defi- 
nition, the  same  cannot  be  said  for  the  word 
'classificatory'.  Morgan,  after  explaining  his  use 
of  the  former,  states  that  a  system  of  the  second 
type  reduces  blood-relatives  to  great  classes  by 
a  series  of  apparently  arbitrary  generalizations, 
applying  the  same  terms  to  all  the  members  of  the 
same  class.  "It  thus  confounds  relationships, 
which,  under  the  descriptive  system,  are  dis- 
tinct, and  enlarges  the  signification  both  of  the 
primary  and  secondary  terms  beyond  their  seem- 
[107] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

ingly  appropriate  sense."'  This  is  looking  at  the 
matter  from  the  arbitrarily  selected  point  of  view 
of  our  own  nomenclature  (which  Morgan  im- 
properly, as  Rivers  has  shown,  regarded  as  de- 
scriptive). Objectively  considered,  even  descrip- 
tive terminologies  are  classificatory,  inasmuch  as 
they  do  not  individualize,  but  content  themselves 
with  such  generalizations  as  classing  together, 
say,  all  the  father's  brothers  instead  of  uni- 
formly specializing  according  to  age.  For  this 
reason  I  regard  as  misplaced  Dr.  Rivers'  empha- 
sis on  whether  a  term  designates  a  single  individ- 
ual or  a  wider  group.  What,  then,  lies  at  the 
basis  of  the  classificatory  principle?  Dr.  Rivers, 
following  Tylor,  reduces  it  to  the  clan  factor  or 
rather  to  the  influence  of  the  dual  organization 
of  ancient  society,  by  which  it  was  divided  into 
exogamous  moieties.  But  this  important  sug- 
gestion, to  which  we  shall  have  to  revert,  applies 
avowedly  only  to  one  form  of  the  classificatory 
system  and  involves,  therefore,  the  hypothesis 
that  this  preceded  other  forms.  This  may  prove 
to  be  valid,  but  we  cannot  prejudice  an  empirical 
survey  by  taking  its  proof  for  granted  and  can- 
not, therefore,  simply  substitute  'clan'  for  'classi- 
ficatory' systems — apart  from  the  fact  that  to 
talk  of  systems  instead  of  principles  or  features 
in  this  connection  is  demonstrably  misleading. 
[io8] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

It  is  quite  clear  that  'classificatory'  can  be  used 
only  in  a  loose  sense,  to  indicate  wider  groupings 
of  kin  than  those  to  which  we  are  accustomed; 
and  that  there  is  no  necessary  evolutionary  rela- 
tion between  the  two  forms  usually  classed  under 
this  head.  The  empirical  data  are  simply  these. 
In  certain  systems,  blood-relatives  are  classed 
according  to  generation  regardless  of  nearness  of 
kinship  and  of  their  maternal  or  paternal  affilia- 
tions; in  others,  there  is  bifurcation,  the  mater- 
nal and  paternal  kin  of  at  least  the  generations 
nearest  to  the  speaker  being  distinguished.  We 
may  call  the  former  the  'unforked  merging',  or 
geographically  the  'Hawaiian'  mode  of  classifi- 
cation; the  latter  may  be  correspondingly  re- 
ferred to  as  'forked  merging',  or  'Dakota'.  One 
point  which  it  is  essential  to  remember  even  at 
this  early  stage  of  our  survey  is  that  these  prin- 
ciples, together  with  the  descriptive  one,  are 
very  far  from  exhausting  the  varieties  found. 

Let  us  now  consider  the  'unforked'  principle 
somewhat  more  closely  as  it  finds  expression 
among  the  Hawaiians.  These  people  apply  a 
single  term,  makua,  to  both  parents  and  to  all 
their  parents'  brothers  and  sisters,  sex  being  dis- 
tinguished only  by  qualifying  words  meaning 
'man'  and  'woman'.  All  related  individuals  of 
one's  generation  are  classed  as  brothers  and  sis- 
[109] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

ters,  certain  distinctions  being  drawn  according 
to  the  age  of  their  parents  relatively  to  that  of 
one's  own  parents  and  also  according  to  the 
speaker's  sex,  but  none  resulting  from  the  differ- 
ences in  nearness  of  kinship.    The  children  of  all 
these  brothers  and  sisters  are  classed  with  one's 
own  children,  and  their  children  with  one's  grand- 
children, while  a  single  term  embraces  grand- 
parents and  all  related  members  of  their  gene- 
ration.^ This  age-stratification  of  blood-relatives 
with  disregard  of  differences  as  to  father's  or 
mother's  side  occurs  not  only  in  Hawaii,  but  also 
in  New  Zealand,  Kusaie,  the  Gilbert  and  Mar- 
shall Islands.*  It  is  not  uninteresting  to  note  that 
Hawaii  and  New  Zealand,  though  far  removed 
from  each  other,  coincide  closely  in  other  cultural 
features  not  shared  with  fellow-Polynesians,  as 
Professor  Dixon  has  recently  shown  in  his  treat- 
ment of  Oceanian  mythology.    The  geographical 
proximity  of  Micronesia  to  Hawaii  hardly  re- 
quires mention.   Dr.  Rivers  points  out^  that  cer- 
tain Polynesian   tribes   in   contact  with   Mela- 
nesians,  whose  systems  display  essentially  the 
forked  principle,  e.g.,  the  Tongans,  use  an  inter- 
mediate nomenclature.  We  are  thus  again  able  to 
summarize  the  data  in  terms  of  historical  con- 
nection.   The  assumption  may  be  made  that  the 
ancient    Polynesian    terminology   was    that    of 
[no] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

Hawaii  and  New  Zealand,  which  was  modified 
where  the  Polynesians  came  into  contact  with 
diverse  populations,  and  is  shared  by  populations 
whose  territory  was  presumably  traversed  by  the 
Hawaiians.  Dr.  Rivers  also  states  that  the 
Burmese,  Karen,  Chinese  and  Japanese  systems 
conform  to  the  Hawaiian  principle.  He  seems  to 
depend  on  Morgan's  statement  of  the  case,  which 
may  require  revision.  But,  accepting  the  data 
as  given  and  assuming  that  the  Malay  proper 
classify  kin  according  to  the  unforked  method, 
we  should  still  have  a  perfectly  continuous  dis- 
tribution for  the  Hawaiian  features. 

This  would  no  longer  hold  if  we  accepted  Mor- 
gan's view  that  the  Zulu  of  South  Africa  share 
the  Hawaiian  form,  on  which  slender  basis  he 
advances  the  hypothesis  that  Kaffir  and  Poly- 
nesian have  a  common  ancestry. ^°  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  Zulu  nomenclature  secured  by  Morgan 
does  in  some  instances  slur  over  the  difference  of 
paternal  and  maternal  lines,  to  the  exclusive 
dominance  of  the  generation  factor.  Thus,  man 
and  woman  call  all  the  brother's  and  sister's  chil- 
dren their  sons  and  daughters  without  distinction, 
and  the  children  of  the  father's  sister  are  classed 
with  one's  brothers  and  sisters. 

Nevertheless,  even  Morgan's  list  reveals  fun- 
damental deviations  from  the  Hawaiian  principle. 
[Ill] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

As  he  notes,  the  mother's  brother  is  not  classed 
with  the  father's  brother  and  father,  and  the 
assumption  that  he  formerly  was  is  mere  guess- 
work. What  particularly  astonished  Morgan, 
however,  was  that  the  father's  sister  was  not 
called  mother,  but  father.  This  is,  indeed, 
amazing,  if  we  start  from  our  own  notions  as  to 
the  necessity  of  distinguishing  parental  sex,  and 
in  addition  assume  that  the  Zulu  system  is  a 
variant  of  the  Hawaiian  one.  If  we  free  our 
minds  from  these  preconceptions,  there  is  no 
myster>'^;  the  father's  sister  is  classed  with  the 
father  simply  in  order  to  express  the  difference 
from  the  maternal  line  in  accordance  with  the 
principle  of  bifurcation. 

In  order  to  gain  greater  clearness  in  this  matter 
it  is  necessary  to  extend  our  investigation  to 
other  Bantu  tribes,  preferably  to  those  whose 
territories  approach  that  of  the  Zulu.  The  es- 
sential point  to  ascertain  is  whether  paternal  and 
maternal  uncles  and  aunts  are  merged  in  one 
group  or  are  distinguished.'^  Among  the  Thonga, 
who  live  north  of  the  Zulu,  the  father's  sister,  as 
in  Zulu,  is  classed  with  the  father,  the  word 
meaning  literally  'female  father'  and  thus  em- 
phasizing her  separation  from  the  mother's  side 
of  the  family.  The  Herero,  according  to  Schinz, 
seem  to  class  all  aunts  with  the  mother  in  voca- 

[112] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

tive  usage,  but  when  not  directly  referring  to 
these  relatives  they  employ  quite  distinct  ex- 
pressions for  the  father's  and  the  mother's  sisters. 
In  Baganda  the  difference  between  the  two  sides 
is  marked.  Mange  is  mother,  and  the  same  word 
with  the  qualifier  muto  means  mother's  sister, 
while  father's  sister  is  sengawe.  Even  clearer  is 
the  case  for  the  maternal  uncle.  In  the  Ronga 
group  of  the  Thonga  he  is  called  by  a  distinct 
word,  malume,  which  almost  coincides  with  Mor- 
gan's Zulu  term.  In  the  Djonga  division  he  is 
classed  with  the  grandfather,  not  the  father.  By 
a  quite  distinct  stem,  the  Herero  sharply  dis- 
tinguish the  mother's  brother  from  the  father  and 
his  brothers.  The  same  applies  to  the  Baganda. 
As  for  the  correlative  term,  from  which  Morgan 
infers  that  the  Zulu  once  called  the  maternal 
uncle  'father',  the  Ronga  have  a  distinct  word 
for  nephew,  mupsyana,  while  the  Djonga  who 
class  the  mother's  brother  with  the  grandfather 
consistently  enough  call  the  sister's  son  'grand- 
son'. Among  the  Herero,  though  uncles  and 
aunts  generally  regard  their  nephews  and  nieces 
as  their  own  children,  the  maternal  uncle  applies 
to  them  a  distinct  term,  ovasia.  Among  the 
Baganda  a  man  calls  his  son  mutabani  or  mwana, 
but  his  sister's  son  is  mujwa.  I  may  add  that 
the  altogether  peculiar  bond  of  familiarity  that 
[113] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

links  together  mother's  brother  and  sister's  son  ^^ 
among  some  Bantu  people  is  inconsistent  with 
Morgan's  assumption  that  the  relationships  of 
maternal  uncle  and  father  were  once  grouped 
under  a  single  head  among  tribes  of  this  family, 
for  as  stated  above,  such  specific  social  relation- 
ships are  generally  expressed  by  specific  terms 
for  the  relatives. 

The  conditions  obtaining  within  the  speaker's 
generation  at  first  seem  to  lend  some  support  to 
the  conception  of  the  Bantu  system  as  dominated 
by  the  Hawaiian  principle,  since  the  terms  for 
brother  and  sister  are  more  widely  employed  by 
some  Bantu  than  is  compatible  with  the  forked 
division  of  kin.  But  closer  inspection  proves 
that,  whatever  may  be  at  the  root  of  the  Bantu 
classification,  it  is  not  the  Hawaiian  notion  of 
marking  off  generations.  Even  in  Morgan's  Zulu 
series,  while  a  man  calls  his  maternal  uncle's 
children  by  a  special  term,  they  address  him 
as  brother;  that  is  to  say,  members  of  the  same 
generation  and  sex  are  not  all  classed  together. 
Among  the  Herero,  where  the  children  of  a 
brother  and  sister  (but  not  of  Geschwister  of  the 
same  sex)  regularly  intermarry,  they  are  placed  in 
a  category  distinct  from  that  of  the  children  of 
two  brothers  and  two  sisters,  who  are  one  anoth- 
er's brothers  and  sisters.  In  Thonga  a  boy  calls 
[114] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLO-GY 

his  mother's  brother's  daughter  'mother',  and  she 
calls  him  'son'.  To  be  sure,  the  Baganda  draw 
no  distinction  between  the  brother,  the  father's 
brother's,  the  father's  sister's,  the  mother's 
brother's  and  the  mother's  sister's  son.  On  the 
other  hand,  only  the  father's  brother's  daughter 
and  the  mother's  sister's  daughter  are  a  man's 
sisters;  his  father's  sister's  and  his  mother's 
brother's  daughter  belong  to  the  special  category 
of  kizibwewe,  quite  distinct  from  that  of  the 
sister,  mwanyina. 

To  cut  a  long  story  short,  all  the  evidence  is 
opposed  to  Morgan's  assumption  that  the  Bantu 
systems  are  patterned  on  the  Hawaiian  principle 
of  grading  relatives  by  generations.  There  are 
merely  occasional  suggestions  of  that  principle 
which  will  be  discussed  below  as  to  their  theoret- 
ical bearing. 

So  far  as  I  know,  there  is  only  one  region  of  the 
globe  outside  of  Oceania  and  the  possible  Asiatic 
range  defined  above,  where  a  definitely  Hawaiian 
classification  of  relatives  by  generations  has  been 
reported,  viz.,  among  the  Yoruba  of  West  Africa.*' 
Unfortunately,  no  more  recent  check  data  for 
this  section  seem  available.  For  another  part  of 
West  Africa  we  have  Mr.  Northcote  W.  Thomas' 
tables,"  which  reveal  a  rather  perplexing  condi- 
tion of  affairs  that  seems  to  demand  intensive 
[115I 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

reinvestigation  together  with  linguistic  analysis. 
The  principle  of  bifurcation  seems  to  hold  sway 
only  in  a  very  limited  measure. 

Thus,  the  Vai  do  not  distinguish  the  father's 
sister  from  the  mother,  though  the  mother's 
brother  is  designated  by  a  distinct  term  from  that 
for  father  and  father's  brother.  Further,  the 
term  for  child  is  extended  also  to  brother's  child 
by  both  sexes  contrary  to  customary  'forked' 
usage.  But  this  cannot  be  interpreted  as  sympto- 
matic of  the  Hawaiian  principle  since  the  sister's 
child  is  designated  by  a  special  word,  which, 
moreover,  differs  for  men  and  women  speaking. 
The  Vai  nomenclature  is  interesting  in  showing 
once  more  that  a  given  'system'  is  a  complex 
growth  that  cannot  be  adequately  defined  as  a 
whole  by  some  such  catchword  as  'classificatory', 
'Hawaiian',  or  what  not.  Not  only  do  we  find 
Hawaiian  and  Dakota  elements  in  the  same 
system,  but  even  purely  descriptive  combina- 
tions of  primary  terms.  Thus,  the  designation 
of  the  sister's  daughter's  husband  is  manifestly 
composed  of  the  stems  for  sister's  child  and  hus- 
band, and  a  corresponding  juxtaposition  of 
stems  results  in  the  term  for  mother's  sister's 
husband. 

A  similar  phenomenon  is  presented  by  the 
terminology  of  the  Timne,  another  Sierra  Leone 
[ii6] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

people.  A  superficial  glance  at  the  list  suggests 
the  Hawaiian  principle:  father's  brother  and 
mother's  brother  are  grouped  together,  and  so 
are  the  children  of  the  maternal  and  the  paternal 
aunt.  But  closer  consideration  shows  that  while 
uncles  are  classed  together  they  are  sharply  sep- 
arated from  the  father,  that  while  aunts  form  a 
single  group  of  ntene  the  word  for  mother  is  kara 
or  ya,  that  there  is  no  connection  between  the 
words  for  Geschwister  and  cousins.  In  short,  the 
Hawaiian  generation  principle  does  not  apply. 

What  Mr.  Thomas'  schedules  from  eight  tribes 
illustrate  once  more  is  the  overw'helming  impor- 
tance of  historical,  geographical  and  linguistic 
considerations.  A  cursory  examination  of  the 
lists  shows  that  not  only  the  mode  of  classifying 
kin  but  the  words  themselves  are  identical  in  a 
number  of  cases  in  two  or  more  tribes.  Thus, 
mama  is  grandmother  in  Karanko,  Susu,  Vai  and 
Mendi.  It  is  surely  no  accident  that  all  of  these 
belong  to  the  same  prefixless  subdivision  of  the 
Sudanese  languages:  the  similarity  is  due  to 
historical  relations.  In  some  cases  an  identical 
word  is  shared  by  members  of  distinct  subdivi- 
sions. Thus,  the  father's  sister  is  called  ntene  not 
only  in  the  non-prefixing  Susu  and  Koranko 
speech,  but  also  in  the  prefixing  language  of  the 
Timne.  A  glimpse  at  Mr.  Thomas'  map  shows, 
[117] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

however,  that  the  habitat  of  the  Timne  adjoins 
that  of  both  of  the  other  tribes;  a  kinship  nomen- 
clature is,  in  a  measure,  a  function  of  geograph- 
ical position. 

The  last-mentioned  term  is  suggestive  in  an- 
other way.  Restricted  among  the  Koranko  and 
Susu  to  the  father's  sister,  it  is  applied  by  the 
Timne  to  the  maternal  aunt  as  well.  Turning 
once  more  to  the  map,  we  discover  that  this  latter 
mode  of  grouping,  though  not  the  same  word 
phonetically,  occurs  among  the  Bulem,  the  im- 
mediate coastal  neighbors  of  the  Timne,  who 
belong  to  the  same  linguistic  subdivision,  and 
also  to  the  Mendi  and  Vai,  to  the  east  and  south- 
east, who  are  members  of  the  complementary 
subdivision.  So  far,  this  only  indicates  the 
spread  of  a  terminological  trait  over  a  continuous 
area.  But  the  data  further  suggest  that  the  word 
ntene  may  have  been  borrowed  by  the  Timne 
rather  than  in  the  reverse  direction,  and  that,  as 
Mr.  Thomas  himself  remarks,  the  Timne  secon- 
darily extended  the  term  to  include  a  maternal  as 
well  as  a  paternal  aunt.  This  possibility  is  the- 
oretically significant,  first,  because  it  indicates 
that  Hawaiian  analogies  may  develop  inde- 
pendently of  any  such  generation  principle  as 
dominates  the  Oceanian  system;  secondly,  be- 
cause it  suggests  that  such  simplicity  of  nomen- 
["81 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

clature,  instead  of  being  primitive  as  Morgan 
supposed,  may  represent  a  later  development. 
To  this  point  we  shall  have  to  revert  later. 

The  Dakota  Principle.  Let  us  now  turn  to  that 
principle  which  first  aroused  Morgan's  interest 
and  which  since  his  time  has  occupied  perhaps 
more  attention  than  any  other,  the  classificatory 
principle  par  excellence  in  Dr.  Rivers'  opinion, 
which  finds  expression  among  such  tribes  as  the 
Iroquois  and  Dakota.  Like  the  Hawaiian  prin- 
ciple, the  Dakota  alignment  groups  together,  re- 
gardless of  proximity  of  relationship,  members  of 
the  same  generation,  but  differs  because  in  the 
speaker's  generation,  the  first  ascending  and  the 
first  descending  generations,  it  separates  the  pa- 
ternal and  the  maternal  line.  Another  way  of 
expressing  the  facts  is  to  say  that  collateral  and 
lineal  kin  are  merged  irrespective  of  nearness  of 
relationship  but  with  strict  bifurcation  of  the 
parental  lines.  Thus,  in  Dakota  ^^  the  father, 
father's  brother,  father's  father's  brother's  son, 
father's  father's  father's  brother's  son's  son  are 
all  addressed  ate;  the  mother,  mother's  sister, 
mother's  mother's  sister's  daughter  are  all  called 
ind.  So  far  we  have  a  classing  together  of  kin 
who  in  English  are  distinguished  from  one  an- 
other. But  there  is  separation  of  kin  whom  we 
class  together,  inasmuch  as  the  mother's  brother 
[119I 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

is  designated  by  a  term  distinct  from  that  for 
father's  brother,  viz.,  by  dekci,  and  the  father's 
sister  by  a  term  differentiating  her  from  the 
mother's  sister,  viz.,  by  /  'uwi.  Now,  relation- 
ship is  a  reciprocal  phenomenon,  and  accordingly 
we  may  expect  that  all  those  whom  I  class  to- 
gether under  the  term  ate  or  ind  will  address  me 
by  a  correlative  term.  Actually,  we  find  that  the 
Dakota  have  a  single  word,  mi  tcinkci,  for  son, 
brother's  son  (man  speaking),  father's  brother's 
son's  son  (man  speaking),  etc.,  and  for  sister's 
son  (woman  speaking),  mother's  sister's  daugh- 
ter's son  (woman  speaking).  To  put  the  matter 
into  our  own  speech,  for  the  sake  of  simplifica- 
tion, those  whom  I  call  father  and  mother  call 
me  son.  If  logic  shall  prevail,  the  data  hitherto 
cited  involve  the  condition  that  the  mother's 
brother  must  not  call  his  sister's  son  'son',  but 
shall  designate  him  by  some  distinct  appellation 
correlative  only  with  the  term  dekci;  and  this 
holds  for  the  Dakota  system  where  a  man  (not  a 
woman)  calls  the  sister's  son  mit  'uncka.  Further 
this  term  is  also  used  by  a  woman  addressing  her 
brother's  son,  a  point  to  which  I  shall  have  to 
return  presently. 

There  are  other  logical  implications  in   the 
features  already  mentioned.     If  the  term   for 
father  embraces  a  number  of  other  collateral  rel- 
[120] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

atives,  we  must  expect  a  corresponding  fusion  of 
kin  in  the  speaker's  generation.  This  is  exactly 
what  happens.  Like  many  other  primitive  sys- 
tems, that  of  the  Dakota  classifies  brothers  and 
sisters  according  to  relative  seniority  and  the 
speaker's  sex,  but  the  same  terms  are  applied  to 
the  other  individuals  who  jointly  designate  the 
same  members  of  the  next  higher  generation  as 
their  fathers  and  mothers.  In  other  words,  a 
considerable  number  of  cousins,  irrespective  of 
their  varying  degree,  are  classed  with  the  brothers 
and  sisters.  But  certain  other  cousins  are  not  so 
classed:  they  are  the  offspring  of  the  father's 
sister  and  the  mother's  brother.  Corresponding 
exactly  to  the  fact  that  sister's  son  (man  speak- 
ing) and  brother's  son  (woman  speaking)  are 
denoted  by  a  single  word,  we  have  the  correla- 
tive phenomenon  that  the  children  of  the  pa- 
ternal aunt  and  the  maternal  uncle  are  relatives 
of  a  special  order,  the  boys  calling  one  another 
/  ^ahd  ci  and  the  girls  ha  kd  ci,  the  girls  calling 
one  another  tee  pqei  and  the  boys  eitce  ci. 

In  short,  so  far  as  the  three  middle  generations 
are  concerned,  there  is  at  least  an  approach  to  a 
real  system — a  unified  logical  scheme  by  which 
blood  relatives  are  classified.  If  I  am  called 
father  by  a  group  of  people,  they  are  my  sons  or 
daughters;    if  I  am  their  uncle,  they  are  my 

[121] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

nephews  or  nieces.  In  the  former  case,  my  sons 
and  daughters  are  their  brothers  and  sisters;  in 
the  latter  my  offspring  are  their  cousins,  with 
various  refinements  of  nomenclature  that  are 
immaterial  from  a  broader  point  of  view. 

The  system  is  not  perfect,  because  of  the  ter- 
minology applied  to  the  offspring  of  cousins.  As 
might  be  expected,  a  man  regards  the  children  of 
those  cousins  whom  he  classes  with  his  brothers 
as  brother's  sons,  i.e.,  from  the  foregoing  scheme, 
with  his  own  sons.  But  contrary  to  what  might 
be  expected,  he  puts  into  the  same  category  the 
sons  of  those  male  cousins  designated  by  a  dis- 
tinctive term  where  we  should  expect  a  distinct 
correlative  designation.  Even  Herr  Cunow,  who 
lays  stress  on  the  rational  character  of  primitive 
relationship  systems,  is  obliged  to  admit  that 
there  is  inconsistency  here.^^ 

It  cannot  be  too  strongly  urged  that  a  given 
nomenclature  is  molded  by  disparate  principles. 
It  is,  therefore,  worth  while  to  point  out  that  the 
principle  by  which  brothers  and  sisters  are  dis- 
tinguished by  seniority  and  the  principle  by 
which  Geschwister  of  the  same  sex  use  different 
designations  from  those  of  opposite  sex  have  no 
functional  relation  whatsoever  with  the  principle 
by  which  collateral  and  lineal  kin  are  merged. 
Another  trait  of  the  Dakota  system  which  is 
[122] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

similarly  independent  of  what  I  call  the  Dakota 
principle  is  the  differentiation  in  stem  for  voca- 
tive and  non-vocative  usage  or  with  the  first, 
second  and  third  person.  Thus,  the  mother  is 
addressed  as  ind,  but  'his  mother'  is  hu  ku,  from 
an  entirely  different  root.  Passing  to  the  second 
ascending  generation,  we  find  a  Hawaiian  feature 
inasmuch  as  the  principle  of  bifurcation  no  longer 
holds,  grandfathers  of  both  sides  being  designated 
by  a  common  term.  The  Dakota  case  once  more 
shows  that,  as  Professor  Kroeber  long  ago 
pointed  out, ^^ every  system  is  in  reality  a  congeries 
of  systems  or  categories  which  must  be  analyti- 
cally separated  unless  complete  confusion  is  to 
result.  There  is  no  Hawaiian  system,  no  Dakota 
system.  But  we  can  legitimately  speak  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  generations  and  the  bifurcation  principle 
of  merging  collateral  and  lineal  kin ;  and  we  can 
speak,  by  conventional  definition  of  the  geo- 
graphical terms  employed,  of  Hawaiian  and  Da- 
kota features  to  express  these  and  only  these 
elements  of  the  Hawaiian  and  Dakota  nomen- 
clatures. 

To  revert  to  the  Dakota  principle,  as  Morgan 
points  out,^^  the  same  principle  has  in  part  molded 
the  Iroquois  system,  and  when  we  find  that  in 
addition  to  the  logically  related  elements  the 
apparently  irrational  classification  of  cousins' 
[123] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

offspring  is  likewise  common  to  the  two  termi- 
nologies, the  case  for  historical  connection  becomes 
very  strong.  This  becomes  a  certainty  when  we 
find  that  in  its  essentials  the  principle  finds  ex- 
pression in  the  system  of  the  intermediate 
Ojibwa,  while  among  other  Algonkian  tribes  and 
among  Siouan  tribes  other  than  the  Dakota  a 
marked  variant  from  the  Dakota  type  makes  its 
appearance.  In  short,  we  have  the  Dakota 
principle  spread  over  a  continuous  region,  which 
is  sharply  separated  from  adjoining  regions.  It 
has,  then,  developed  in  a  single  center  in  this 
part  of  North  America  and  has  thence  spread  by 
borrowing. 

If  we  ignore  the  mode  of  designating  'cross- 
cousins',  i.e.,  cousins  who  are  children  of  a 
brother  and  a  sister,  and  disregard  certain  other 
deviations  constituting  sub-types,  we  get  a  very 
much  wider  range  of  distribution  for  the  Dakota 
principle  in  North  America.  The  neglect  of 
degree  of  kinship  and  the  clear  separation  of  the 
maternal  and  paternal  line  in  the  middle  gene- 
rations are  features  characteristic,  probably,  of 
the  entire  region  east  of  the  Mississippi  and  occur 
also  in  the  Mackenzie  River  district,  among  the 
Tlingit  and  Haida  of  the  Northwest  Coast  and 
most  of  the  Plains  tribes,  in  a  part  of  the  Pueblo 
territory  (notably  among  the  Hopi),  and  among 
[124] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

the  Miwok  and  adjacent  populations  in  Califor- 
nia. Since  we  are  not  by  any  means  familiar 
with  the  kinship  systems  of  the  entire  continent, 
it  is  necessary  to  supplement  this  statement  with 
another  indicating  the  regions  where  the  Dakota 
principle  is  actually  known  to  be  lacking.  The 
Dakota  features  are  not  found  among  the  Es- 
kimo, Nootka,  Quileute,  Chinook,  various  Salish 
tribes,  the  Kootenai,  the  Plateau  Shoshoneans, 
nor  in  a  large  section  of  California  to  the  north 
and  east  of  the  Miwok,  and  they  are  also  absent 
from  various  Southwestern  terminologies.  The 
glib  assumption  of  many  writers  that  all  of  North 
America  is  characterized  by  a  'classificatory  sys- 
tem' on  the  Dakota  plan,  is  demonstrably  false. 
The  only  reason  for  this  belief  is  the  historical 
accident  that  Morgan  was  conversant  with  the 
systems  east  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  and  prac- 
tically altogether  ignorant  of  those  of  the  Far 
West,  and  that  since  his  time  no  one  has  sys- 
tematically presented  the  data  for  what  to  him 
was  a  terra  incognita. 

Let  us  extend  our  search  for  evidences  of  the 
Dakota  principle  to  other  regions. 

For  Mexico,  the  data  are  not  very  satisfactory 

since  we  are  obliged   to  rely  on   old  Spanish 

sources  and  cannot  be  sure  that  our  authorities 

were  on  the  alert  for  differences  from  the  familiar 

[125] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

European  nomenclature  or  always  correctly  rep- 
resented what  they  did  find.  Thus,  Dr.  Paul 
Radin,  who  has  kindly  compiled  for  me  a  Taras- 
can  list  from  Gilberti's  Diccionario  de  la  Lengua 
Tarasca  (1559),  finds  the  children  of  the  father's 
brother  and  of  the  mother's  brother  classed  with 
the  son  and  daughter  (contrary  to  the  generation 
principle),  but  distinguished  from  the  children 
of  the  father's  and  mother's  sister.  This  would 
indicate  a  departure  from  both  the  Hawaiian  and 
the  Dakota  scheme.  A  bare  suggestion  of  the 
latter  is  found  in  a  common  term  for  father  and 
paternal  uncle.  The  Nahuatl  data  supplied  by 
Molina  in  his  Vocabulario  de  la  Lengua  Mexicana 
(1571)  show  no  difference  between  the  paternal 
and  maternal  aunts  and  uncles.  This  does  not 
apply  to  the  Maya  system  reported  by  Beltran 
in  his  Arte  del  Idioma  Maya  (1742),  but  here  the 
maternal  and  paternal  uncle  and  aunt  are  not 
only  distinguished  from  each  other,  but  also  from 
the  father  and  mother,  so  that  there  is  no  merg- 
ing of  collateral  and  lineal  lines  in  this  generation. 
Accordingly,  it  is  somewhat  surprising  to  find 
that  the  children  of  a  brother  are  classed  with 
one's  own  children  (male  speaking?)  and  that  a 
woman  applies  the  same  term  to  her  sister's 
children,  in  accordance  with  Dakota  usage.  A 
very  interesting  feature  of  the  Maya  nomen- 
[126] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

clature  is  that  differences  in  generation  are  con- 
spicuously ignored  in  several  instances.  The 
paternal  grandfather  is  classed  with  the  elder 
brother,  a  single  reciprocal  term  is  used  for 
daughter's  son  and  mother's  father,  one  word 
denotes  the  son's  son  and  the  younger  brother. 
For  Central  and  South  America  the  data,  from 
a  cursory  inspection,  seem  somewhat  more  ad- 
equate, though  we  must  eagerly  await  a  more 
thorough-going  survey  of  this  region  than  can  at 
present  be  offered.  The  Miskito  of  Nicaragua 
call  the  mother's  sister  yaptislip,  which  is  merely 
a  modification  of  yapti,  mother,  but  while  the 
father's  brother,  urappia,  is  classed  with  the 
step-father,  he  is  distinguished  from  the  father, 
aisa.  At  all  events,  there  is  a  distinctive  term 
for  maternal  uncle,  tarti,  and  correlatively  a 
special  designation,  tubani,  for  the  sister's  son 
(man  speaking).  For  the  father's  sister  our 
authority  gives  only  a  descriptive  term:  saura 
may  be  the  correlative  term,  but  it  is  simply 
translated  'brother's  child'.  Of  the  four  terms 
for  cousin,  one  is  descriptive  (child  of  brother  or 
sister),  two  coincide  with  the  regular  words  for 
Geschwister,  the  fourth  is  unfortunately  not 
clearly  defined  so  that  its  application  to  the  cross- 
cousin,  which  would  conform  to  Dakota  usage, 
remains  problematical.  The  terms  of  affinity  are 
[127] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

interesting  inasmuch  as  the  principle  of  reci- 
procity appears  here.  Thus,  dapna  means  both 
father-in-law  and  son-in-law,  and  the  same  de- 
scriptive expression,  oddly  enough,  is  applied  to 
the  mother-in-law  and  daughter-in-law  in  female 
speech. 1^  The  former  instance  of  reciprocity  recurs 
among  the  Chibcha  of  Colombia  and  we  may 
thus  have  here  another  case  of  the  geographical 
localization  of  kinship  features.  The  Chibcha 
list  supplied  by  one  of  Morgan's  informants,^"  im- 
perfect though  it  is,  records  some  suggestive 
facts.  The  term  for  father's  brother  seems  only 
a  variant  of  the  word  for  father,  and  is  clearly 
distinct  from  that  for  maternal  uncle.  The  desig- 
nations for  both  kinds  of  aunt  are  doubtful.  In 
the  speaker's  generation  'parallel'  male  cousins, 
i.e.,  the  sons  of  two  brothers  and  of  two  sisters, 
are  grouped  with  brothers  and  distinguished  from 
cross-cousins,  as  they  are  in  the  Dakota  system. 
That  a  woman  calls  her  father's  sister's  son  by 
the  same  term  as  her  husband  is  a  fact  of  some 
theoretical  importance  since  it  suggests  the  pos- 
sible occurrence  of  cross-cousin  marriages. 

From  Martins'  rather  confusing  Carib  list  we 
may  reasonably  infer  that  the  paternal  uncle  was 
classed  with  the  father  in  male  speech  and  dis- 
tinguished from  the  mother's  brother.  One  of 
three  terms  used  by  a  man  in  designating  his 

[128] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

son  coincides  with  that  appHed  to  a  brother's 
son,  but  differs  from  the  word  appHed  to  the 
sister's  son.  These  are  Dakota  features;  and 
the  pecuHar  statement  that  children  of  sisters 
were  allowed  to  marry  while  those  of  brothers 
were  not,  coupled  with  the  remark  that  Ge- 
schwisterkinder  call  one  another  brothers  makes 
us  suspect  that  we  have  here  merely  an  abortive 
attempt  to  describe  the  difference  between  par- 
allel and  cross-cousins  recognized  on  the  Dakota 
principle.  The  Tupi  terminology  furnished  by 
the  same  writer  does  not  suggest  the  bifurcate 
feature.  Though  a  single  word  denotes  the 
father,  his  brother  and  other  paternal  kinsmen, 
it  seems  to  extend  likewise  to  the  corresponding 
relatives  on  the  mother's  side.  In  the  second 
ascending  generation  the  grandfather's  brothers 
and  male  cousins  are  classed  with  the  grand- 
father— a  Hawaiian  trait  if  both  sides  of  the 
family  are  meant  to  be  included,  but  one  com- 
mon to  most  systems  on  the  Dakota  plan  for  the 
middle  generations.^^  From  the  third  great  South 
American  family  I  can  get  no  satisfactory  evi- 
dence of  bifurcation  on  the  Dakota  plan.  Ac- 
cording to  an  accessible  glossary  of  various  Ara- 
wak  tongues,  the  Siusi  is  the  only  language  that 
discriminates  between  the  paternal  and  maternal 
uncle,  and  even  here  the  former  is  also  dis- 
[129] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

tinguished  from  the  father,  so  that  there  is  no 
merging  of  collateral  and  lineal  kin.  Similarly, 
the  word  for  aunt  is  different  from  that  for 
mother;  and  here  the  principle  of  bifurcation  is 
completely  discarded,  since  a  single  word  de- 
notes father's  and  mother's  sister.^^ 

Bifurcation  may  be  a  dominant  feature  of 
systems  which  nevertheless  differ  markedly  from 
the  Dakota  nomenclature  because  of  their 
demarcation  of  collateral  and  lineal  kin.  Thus, 
the  Araucanians  of  Chile  call  the  father  chao,  the 
father's  brother  malle,  the  mother's  brother 
huecu;  the  mother  is  nuque,  her  sister  nuqiientu, 
the  father's  sister  paluP  Here  the  designation 
of  the  maternal  aunt  is  clearly  derived  from  that 
of  the  mother  but  we  cannot  tell  whether  this 
merging  is  an  ancient  feature  which  appears  in 
other  parts  of  the  system  or  a  recent  develop- 
ment. We  learn  from  another  source  that  the 
brother's  sons  are  differentiated  from  the 
sister's,^*  but  unfortunately  there  is  no  state- 
ment as  to  whether  the  former  in  male  speech 
and  the  latter  in  female  speech  are  classed  with 
one's  own  sons. 

Bifurcation  without  reduction  of  the  collateral 

lines  is  characteristic  of  the  system  of  the  Sipibo, 

who    inhabit    the   country   about    the    Ucayali 

River.     Here  the  father  is  papa;    the  father's 

[130I 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

brother  eppa,  the  maternal  uncle  cuca;  the 
mother  tita,  her  sister  huasta,  the  paternal  aunt 
yaya,  and  of  the  three  words  for  brother's  son 
{pia,  nusa,  picha)  none  even  remotely  resembles 
that  for  son,  baque?^ 

To  sum  up  the  facts  hitherto  cited.  If  the 
doctrine  of  the  unity  of  the  American  race 
depended  on  the  uniformity  of  kinship  termi- 
nologies in  the  New  World,  it  would  have  to  be 
mercilessly  abandoned.  Meager  as  are  our  data 
for  the  area  south  of  the  United  States,  we  can 
find  positive  indications  of  nomenclatures  with 
Dakota  features  only  among  the  Caribs  and  the 
Chibcha,  with  occas'onal  suggestions  elsewhere. 
The  Tupi  and  Arawak  systems  are  markedly 
unforked;  the  Araucanian  and  Sipibo  termi- 
nologies are  forked  but  non-merging.  Taking 
into  account  the  large  section  of  North  America 
already  defined  as  lacking  bifurcation  with 
merging,  we  thus  have  an  immense  territory  in 
America  in  which  the  Dakota  principle  does  not 
occur. 

But,  as  the  African  facts  cited  above  show, 
the  Dakota  principle  is  not  confined  to  a  portion 
of  the  Western  Hemisphere.  It  is  impossible 
completely  to  define  its  distribution  in  various 
parts  of  the  globe,  but  the  main  regions  must  be 
indicated.  As  Morgan  pointed  out  on  the  basis 
[131] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

of  Rev.  Fison's  information, ^^  the  principle 
occurs  in  the  nomenclature  of  the  Coastal 
Fijians,  and  corroborative  evidence  has  recently 
been  furnished.^  Rivers  has  shown  that  the 
typical  Dakota  principle  appears  in  other  parts 
of  Melanesia,  often  with  a  very  interesting 
additional  feature  in  the  designation  of  cross- 
cousins,  who  are  not  only  rigidly  distinguished 
from  the  parallel  cousins  but  classed  simultane- 
ously as  brothers-in-law  and  sisters-in-law,  e.  g., 
in  Guadalcanar.^  Bifurcation  with  merging  of 
collateral  and  lineal  relatives  also  characterizes 
at  least  some  of  the  terminologies  of  New 
Guinea. 23  The  same  certainly  holds  for  a  large 
portion  of  Australia,  though  almost  everyw'here 
certain  local  refinements  are  apparent.  Thus, 
the  Urabunna  apply  one  term  to  the  father  and 
the  father's  brothers,  as  might  be  expected.  But 
instead  of  merely  separating  the  mother's  sisters 
from  those  of  the  father  by  grouping  them  with 
the  mother,  there  is  an  additional  dichotomy 
into  the  mother's  elder  sisters,  hika,  who  are 
classed  with  the  mother,  and  the  mother's 
younger  sisters  who  are  differentiated  as  nam- 
uma.  Corresponding  differentiation  occurs  in 
the  speaker's  generation,  where  the  father's 
elder  sister's  daughters  are  distinguished  not 
only  from  parallel  cousins  but  from  the  father's 
[132] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

younger  sister's  daughters.  Nevertheless,  the 
essentials  of  the  Dakota  principle  are  manifest.'" 

Here  it  is  worth  while  to  point  out  again  how 
misleading  it  is  to  treat  accidentally  associated 
features  of  a  given  system  as  functionally  cor- 
related. The  Urabunna  system,  like  that  of 
other  tribes,  is  not  an  organically  unified  whole. 
Thus,  over  and  above  the  usual  trait  of  bifurcate 
merging,  we  find  the  feature  that  a  grandparent 
and  grandchild  use  a  common  term  in  addressing 
each  other.  This  reciprocity  is  often  referred  to 
as  characteristic  of  'classificatory  systems'.  It 
is  nothing  of  the  kind.  In  North  America  it 
occurs  precisely  in  systems  lacking  the  classifica- 
tory principle  altogether.  Apart  from  this, 
there  is  no  manifest  connection  between  the 
principles  of  grouping  together  relatives  of 
alternate  generations  and  the  principle  of  class- 
ing under  one  head  relatives  of  the  same  genera- 
tion and  side  of  the  family.  The  mere  fact  that 
kinsfolk  are  united  whom  we  happen  to  sepa- 
rate in  nomenclature  is  a  purely  negative  and 
Insufficient  reason  for  postulating  an  essential 
relationship  between  two  modes  of  classification. 

Finally,  there  are  a  number  of  Asiatic  tribes 
whose  systems  reveal  the  essentials  of  the 
Dakota  principle.  At  least  a  close  approxima- 
tion occurs  In  the  nomenclature  of  the  Gllyak  of 
[133] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

the  Amur  River  country,  where,  except  for  the 
grouping  together  of  father's  and  mother's  sister, 
the  two  parental  Hnes  are  kept  apart  while  on 
either  side  the  customary  merging  takes  place.^^ 
The  system  of  the  Tamil,  as  Morgan  emphati- 
cally pointed  out,  is  almost  identical  with  that 
of  the  Seneca  Iroquois.^^  The  essential  resem- 
blance to  this  type  of  the  Toda,^  Singhalese  and 
Vedda^*  terminologies  has  since  been  established. 
We  are  here  again  confronted  by  a  problem  in 
distribution  that  does  not  differ  in  principle  from 
ethnological  problems  relating  to  other  phases  of 
culture.  A  sharply  individualized  feature  is 
found  not  like  the  Hawaiian  principle  practically 
within  the  limits  of  a  single  continuous  area  but 
in  several  diverse  and  remote  regions  of  the 
globe.  It  is  impossible  to  hold  with  Morgan 
that  the  similarity  found  is  an  index  of  racial 
affinity  unless  we  are  willing  to  assume  that  the 
Indians  of  the  eastern  United  States  are  not 
related  at  all  to  those  west  of  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains. The  principle  of  diffusion  obviously 
accounts  for  much.  No  one  would  hesitate  to 
assume  that  the  Singhalese  and  Vedda  systems 
are  connected  and  we  should  willingly  regard 
both  as  historically  related  to  the  nomenclature 
of  southern  India.  We  might  even  be  willing  to 
grant  that  the  Melanesian  and  Australian 
[134] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

variants  of  the  Dakota  principle  had  the  same 
source  of  origin.  But  how  can  we  explain  the 
predominance  of  the  identical  principle  precisely 
in  the  eastern  regions  of  North  America  and  its 
absence  in  a  great  part  of  the  Far  West?  And 
how  can  we  account  for  the  African  approxima- 
tions to  the  same  pattern?  We  seem  to  have  an 
independent  evolution  of  the  same  highly 
characteristic  trait  in  at  least  three  distinct 
areas.  Must  we  content  ourselves  with  simply 
accepting  the  data  as  irreducible  ethnological 
phenomena  or  can  we  carry  our  analysis  a  step 
further? 

That  the  inclusiveness  of  terms  which  strikes 
us  in  the  systems  sharing  the  Dakota  principle  is 
somehow  connected  with  the  social  divisions  of 
the  tribes  concerned  has  been  repeatedly  noted. 
Even  in  his  earlier,  purely  descriptive  work 
Morgan  remarked  that  among  the  Iroquois  clan 
members  were  brothers  and  sisters  as  if  children 
of  the  same  mother.^^  Similarly  among  the 
Tlingit  we  are  told  that  a  single  word  is  applied 
to  the  mother's  sister  and  all  other  women  of 
the  same  moiety  and  generation. ^^  The  Yakut 
apply  one  term  to  any  woman  older  than  the 
speaker  and  belonging  to  the  same  gens.^^  Such 
instances  might  easily  be  multiplied.  It  is  there- 
fore rather  natural  to  look  to  a  clan  or  gentile 
[135] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

system  for  the  explanation  of  the  'classificatory 
feature',  i.  e.,  of  bifurcate  merging. 

This  hypothesis,  which  has  recently  been 
discussed  by  Swanton,^  was  already  advanced 
only  to  be  proved  inadequate  by  Morgan  him- 
self. Taking  the  Seneca  for  illustration,  where 
descent  is  in  the  maternal  line,  Morgan  shows 
that  the  children  of  two  sisters  would  indeed  be 
members  of  the  same  clan  and  hence  clan 
brothers  and  sisters  but  that  this  explanation  no 
longer  holds  for  the  children  of  two  brothers. 
By  the  law  of  exogamy  these  would  be  required 
to  marry  into  another  clan  and  there  is  no  reason 
why  their  wives  should  belong  to  the  same  clan. 
Hence  the  brothers'  children  will  not  be  clan 
brothers  and  sisters,  yet,  according  to  Seneca 
terminology,  the  offspring  of  brothers  no  less 
than  of  sisters  are  classed  with  own  brothers  and 
sisters.  Accordingly,  the  clan  system — though 
it  has  a  definite  place  in  Morgan's  scheme  of 
evolution — is  not  regarded  by  him  as  the  deter- 
mining factor  of  the  Seneca-Dakota  principle.^^ 

But  the  objection  vanishes  if  we  accept  the 
theory  that  the  Dakota  principle  arose  as  a 
reflection  not  of  a  multiple  clan  system  but  of  an 
organization  with  exogamous  moieties.  This 
theory,  which  to  my  knowledge  was  first  devel- 
oped by  Tylor*"  and  has  since  been  advocated  by 
1 136] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

Rivers,^^  has  obvious  advantages.  Even  on  the 
simple  clan  hypothesis  it  is  clear  why  the  father's 
brothers  should  be  classed  with  the  father  and 
separated  from  the  maternal  uncles,  since  the 
latter  by  exogamy  must  belong  to  a  different 
clan.  The  term  which  we  translate  'father' 
would  really  be  seen  to  mean  'male  member  of 
the  father's  clan  and  generation'.  With  the 
moiety  theory  the  same  facts  are  explained,  but 
also  in  addition  the  designations  for  other 
relatives.  To  take  again  the  Seneca  instance, 
the  sons  of  two  brothers  must  be  members  of  the 
same  social  division  because  with  a  dual  organ- 
ization the  brothers  are  restricted  to  the  same 
division  in  the  choice  of  a  mate;  hence  it  is 
quite  natural  that  the  sons  of  brothers  should 
call  one  another  brothers.  Again,  the  difference 
between  parallel  cousins  and  cross-cousins  is 
perfectly  intelligible.  The  mother's  brother's 
and  the  father's  sister's  son  can  never  be  of  my 
moiety;  if  descent  is  matrilineal  they  belong  to 
my  father's  moiety,  if  patrilineal  to  my  mother's. 
Hence  it  is  natural  that  they  should  not  be 
classed  with  my  brothers  who  in  either  case  are 
my  moiety-mates.  This  hypothesis  also  explains 
features  not  yet  referred  to,  but  often  found  in 
conjunction  with  those  grouped  under  the  head- 
ing of  the  Dakota  principle,  e.  g.,  the  frequent 
[137] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

classification  of  the  father's  sister's  husband  with 
the  maternal  uncle.  Given  exogamous  moieties, 
these  relatives  must  belong  to  the  same  half  of 
society,  to  my  own  moiety  if  descent  is  maternal, 
to  my  mother's  if  it  is  patrilineal.  The  Tylor- 
Rivers  theory  thus  explains  very  satisfactorily 
the  rather  numerous  features  that  jointly 
constitute  what  I  have  called  the  Dakota  princi- 
ple; we  can  at  once  see  that  here  is  not  an 
arbitrary  rule  of  classification  but  a  definite 
rationale. 

However,  it  is  worth  noting  that  while  the 
moiety  theory  explains  a  number  of  traits  better 
and  more  simply  than  the  hypothesis  of  multiple 
clans  or  gentes  of  which  it  is  a  special  form,  the 
latter  is  not  in  so  bad  a  plight  as  Morgan  would 
have  us  believe.  That  I  should  call  my  father's 
brothers  and  male  cousins  of  the  paternal  line 
'father'  and  my  mother's  sisters  and  female 
cousins  of  the  female  line  'mother',  follows 
from  the  general  hypothesis  of  exogamy  no  less 
than  from  the  moiety  theory.  The  difficulty 
urged  is  the  grouping  together  of  brothers'  sons 
who  are  not  clansmen  under  a  matrilineal 
organization  with  sisters'  sons  who  are. 
But  all  terms  of  relationship  are  correlative: 
the  concept  of  elder  brother  is  meaningless 
without  the  correlated  concept  of  younger 
[138] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

brother;  so  the  very  fact  that  I  address  my 
father's  brother  as  'father'  has  as  a  necessary 
consequence  that  he  should  address  me  as  'son' 
regardless  of  whether  his  own  son  is  in  my  clan. 
Similarly,  the  fact  that  my  father's  brother's 
son  and  I  both  address  my  own  father  as  father 
makes  us  brothers  irrespective  of  clan  affiliation. 
Clan  affiliation  is  still  the  primary  determinant 
since  it  fixes  the  connotation  of  the  word  trans- 
lated 'father',  while  the  other  usages  mentioned 
are  derivative  applications.  The  objection  that 
naturally  obtrudes  itself  is  why  the  term  for 
father  should  be  taken  as  the  starting-point 
rather  than  that  for  son  or  brother.  The  answer 
lies  in  the  fact  that  in  a  number  of  instances  the 
term  for  father  has  an  emphatically  clan  or 
gentile  significance,  being  extended  even  to 
father's  clansmen  of  the  speaker's  generation, 
as  among  the  Crow  and  Arizona  Tewa.  Never- 
theless, it  cannot  be  denied  that  from  the  point 
of  view  of  summarizing  the  data  comprised 
under  the  caption  of  'Dakota  principle'  or 
intimately  linked  with  them  the  moiety  theory 
is  distinctly  superior.  Thus,  the  union  of 
father's  sister's  husband  and  mother's  brother 
under  a  single  head  does  not  follow  from  a 
multiple  clan  or  gentile  organization  but  is 
intelligible  on  the  basis  of  a  dual  division. 
I139I 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

The  weakness  of  the  moiety  theory  lies  in 
another  direction.  In  order  that  the  dual 
organization  may  fashion  kinship  nomenclature, 
it  must  of  course  exist.  Now  it  does  occur  in 
Australia  and  Melanesia,  though  not  universally, 
and  in  part  of  North  America,  but  it  is  lacking 
in  many  regions  of  this  continent  and,  so  far  as 
I  know,  in  Africa.  If  we  derive  the  Dakota 
principle  exclusively  from  the  dual  organization 
we  are  therefore  obliged  to  assume  either  that 
this  institution  once  had  a  far  wider  range  of 
distribution  or  that  the  nomenclature  it  pro- 
duced traveled  independently  of  the  moieties  to 
a  considerable  number  of  other  peoples.  This  is 
a  difficulty  that  must  be  frankly  recognized. 

In  this  regard  the  exogamy  hypothesis  in  the 
broader  sense  enjoys  an  obvious  superiority. 
Exogamous  kin  groups  occur  both  in  southern 
Africa  and  in  many  sections  of  America  from 
which  exogamous  moieties  have  never  been 
reported.  Doubtless  here,  too,  we  must  reckon 
to  a  considerable  extent  with  the  effect  of  diffu- 
sion, which  repeatedly  carried  the  Dakota 
principle  to  non-exogamous  tribes.  Yet  when 
we  apply  the  method  of  variation  to  the  best- 
studied  regions  of  the  globe,  our  confidence  in 
the  essential  correctness  of  the  exogamy  hypoth- 
esis is  considerably  strengthened.  In  Oceania  it 
[140] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

is  the  non-exogamous  Polynesians  who  fail  to 
distinguish  the  maternal  and  paternal  sides, 
while  the  generally  exogamous  Melanesians 
recognize  the  principle  of  bifurcation.  In 
North  America,  the  non-exogamous  tribes  are 
either  bifurcating  but  fail  to  merge  the  col- 
lateral and  lineal  lines  or  neither  bifurcate  nor 
merge  >2 

Certain  instances  are  especially  illuminating 
because  they  permit  a  refinement  of  the  method 
of  variation  by  the  practical  or  total  elimination 
of  other  factors  to  account  for  the  phenomena. 
Thus  on  the  northwest  coast  of  America  we  find 
certain  tribes  like  the  Kwakiutl  and  Nootka 
who  are  not  organized  in  strictly  exogamous 
groups,  and  here  neither  merging  nor  bifurcation 
occurs,  "The  terms  for  'uncle'  and  'aunt'  refer 
equally  to  the  father's  and  mother's  fraternity;" 
and  specific  terms  distinguish  father  and  mother 
from  more  remote  kindred.  When  we  compare 
such  systems  with  those  of  the  more  northern 
and  exogamous  tribes,  viz.,  the  Tsimshian, 
Haida  and  Tlingit,  we  discover  at  once  a  strik- 
ing difference.  In  all  these  terminologies  men 
of  the  father's  are  distinguished  from  those  of 
the  mother's  moiety  or  clan;  and  the  collateral 
lines  are  wholly,  or  almost  entirely,  merged  in 
the  lineal  lines.^'  Here  we  are  not  dealing 
[141] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

simply  with  a  contact  phenomenon,  for  no  good 
reason  can  be  given  why  the  Tlingit  system 
should  not  have  extended  southward  or  the 
Kwakiutl  system  to  the  north.  Nor  are  we 
simply  confronted  by  a  difference  of  tribal 
affiliation:  while  the  Kwakiutl  and  Nootka 
belong  to  the  same  stock,  and  affinity  has 
recently  been  claimed  for  the  Tlingit  and  Haida 
languages,  the  Tsimshian  stand  apart.  It  is  the 
difference  in  social  organization  that  runs  paral- 
lel with  the  difference  in  nomenclature. 

A  similar  case  is  afforded  by  the  Shoshonean 
stock.  Within  this  family  specific  terms  for 
father  and  mother  as  opposed  to  uncles  and 
aunts  are  the  rule  and  cross-cousins  are  generally 
not  distinguished  from  parallel  cousins  and 
brothers.  There  is  thus  a  combination  of 
extreme  Hawaiian  inclusiveness  in  the  speaker's 
generation  with  the  tendency  to  non-classifica- 
tory  nomenclature  in  the  first  ascending  genera- 
tion. But  among  the  Hopi,  the  only  member  of 
the  group  organized  into  exogamous  clans, 
the  Dakota  principle  holds  sway.  Since  no 
Southwestern  system  is  known  that  so  clearly 
reveals  the  forked  and  merging  principle,  the 
possibility  of  borrowing  seems  barred  and  we 
have  proof  of  the  independent  evolution  of  this 
feature  in  correlation  with  a  clan  system. 
[142] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

So  far,  then,  as  the  distribution  of  the  Dakota 
principle  over  discontinuous  regions  of  the  globe 
is  concerned,  the  hypothesis  of  exogamy  gives  a 
reasonably  satisfactory  explanation  of  the  facts, 
while  within  each  continuous  area  we  shall 
assume  a  greater  or  lesser  degree  of  dissemina- 
tion.- Applying  this,  e.  g.,  to  the  Northwestern 
Indians  as  a  whole,  we  shall  indeed  regard  the 
evolution  of  Dakota  features  as  a  response  to 
the  exogamous  organization,  but  when  we  turn 
to  the  three  exogamous  tribes  individually,  we 
shall  face  the  problem  whether  the  terminology 
did  not  spread  from  one  tribe  to  its  two  neigh- 
bors. It  is  quite  true  that  theoretically  there  is 
the  possibility  that  the  clan  system,  not  the  ter- 
minology, was  the  diffused  feature  and  that  the 
organization  in  each  case  independently  pro- 
duced an  appropriate  nomenclature.  However, 
we  have  undoubted  instances  in  which  features 
of  nomenclature  were  not  associated  with  any 
social  institution,  indeed,  where  the  very  words 
have  been  borrowed.  Further  the  development 
of  an  appropriate  terminology  is  not  an  absolute- 
ly automatic  process,  as  is  shown  by  the  failure 
of  some  tribes  with  exogamy  to  develop  one. 
Hence  it  seems  probable  that  within  a  limited 
continuous  area  the  Dakota  principle  developed 
only  once  and  then  spread  to  neighboring  tribes. 
[143I 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

That  the  existence  of  an  exogamous  organiza- 
tion among  the  borrowers  would  be  a  favorable 
condition  for  the  adoption  of  the  nomenclature 
is  obvious,  also  that  the  organization  and  the 
terminology  may  be  borrowed  jointly. 

In  order  to  strengthen  the  case  for  the  exoga- 
mous theory  it  is  necessary  to  show  that  the  same 
results  could  not  be  accomplished,  or  not  so 
well,  by  other  conditions  of  equally  wide  dis- 
tribution. As  a  matter  of  fact,  an  alternative 
interpretation  has  recently  been  advanced.*^  In 
the  case  of  the  non-exogamous  Californian  Yahi 
Dr.  Sapir  connects  the  merging  of  lineal  and 
collateral  lines  with  the  marriage  regulations 
obtaining  there  and  suggests  that  these  rules 
"may  no  doubt  not  infrequently  be  examined  as 
an  equally  or  more  plausible  determining 
influence".  The  practices  referred  to  comprise 
the  levirate,  i.  e.,  a  man's  marriage  with  his 
brother's  widow,  and  marriage  with  the  deceased 
wife's  sister.  (Why,  deceased?  we  may  well  ask  Dr. 
Sapir,  since  a  man's  preemptive  right  to  his  wife's 
younger  sisters  is  a  widespread  custom  in  North 
America.) 

I  do  not  doubt  for  a  moment  that  the  customs 

in  question  have  affected  kinship  nomenclature, 

but  I  seriously  question  whether  they  constitute 

an  adequate  substitute  for  exogamy  as  an  inter- 

I144] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

pretation  of  the  empirical  distribution  of  the 
Dakota  principle.  The  levirate,  it  is  true,  is  an 
exceedingly  widespread  institution :  Tylor  found 
it  among  one  hundred  and  twenty  out  of  some 
three  hundred  peoples.^^  But  the  levirate  alone 
will  not  do  since  it  only  explains  the  extension  of 
the  father  term  to  the  father's  brother  and  the 
correlative  extension  of  the  term  'son'  to  the 
brother's  son  (man  speaking).  It  remains  to  be 
seen,  therefore,  to  what  extent  the  levirate  is 
united  in  different  regions  of  the  globe  with  the 
usage  of  marrying  two  or  more  sisters,  which 
would  further  explain  the  classification  of 
mother's  sister  with  mother  and  of  the  sister's 
children  with  the  children  (woman  speaking). 
So  far  as  I  know,  the  range  of  the  two  usages 
jointly  has  not  been  ascertained;  pending  its 
determination,  the  distribution  of  the  Dakota 
principle  is  not  accounted  for,  as  it  approximately 
is  by  exogamy. 

There  are  certain  other  objections  to  the 
levirate  hypothesis.  One  of  them  was  already 
urged  by  Morgan,  who  examined  it  under  the 
heading  of  polygamy  and  polyandry,  which 
together  might  obviously  lead  to  the  same  results 
as  the  Yahi  usages.^^  These  customs  do  not 
necessarily  take  in  the  entire  population.  A 
man  may  not  have  a  brother  to  inherit  his 
[145] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

widow,  nor  have  all  women  sisters  to  join  or 
follow  them  in  wedlock.  On  the  other  hand, 
clan  or  gentile  affiliation  is  an  automatic  affair 
not  touched  by  such  contingencies. 

Further,  we  may  ask,  what  is  really  explained 
by  the  Yahi  rules?  The  relationships  of  paternal 
uncle  and  maternal  aunt  and  their  discrimina- 
tion from  the  mother's  brother  and  father's 
sister  are  certainly  accounted  for;  and  correla- 
tively,  the  distinction  between  the  offspring  of 
such  relatives.  But  though  discussion  has 
hitherto  for  simplicity's  sake  been  mainly 
restricted  to  these  nearer  kindred,  the  Dakota 
principle  involves  far  more  remote  relatives.  It 
is  not  only  the  father's  brother  but  the  father's 
father's  brother's  son  and  the  greatgrand- 
father's brother's  son's  son  that  are  classed  with 
the  father;  not  only  the  mother's  sister  but  the 
mother's  mother's  sister's  daughter  and  mother's 
mother's  mother's  sister's  daughter's  daughter 
that  are  classed  with  the  mother.  No  doubt  an 
explanation  can  be  patched  together  on  the 
levirate-polygyny  hypothesis.  Since  my  father 
is  brother  to  my  father's  father's  brother's  son, 
the  latter  is  my  potential  father  under  the 
levirate  rule,  and  so  forth.  But  even  with  the 
multiple  clan  or  gentile  hypothesis,  the  facts  are 
more  directly  explained.  From  this  point  of 
[146I 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

view  the  relative  in  question  is  simply  a  father's 
clansman  with  paternal  descent,  while  with 
matrilineal  descent  the  designations  for  the 
mother's  mother's  sister's  daughter  et  al.  are  at 
once  clear.  The  moiety  theory,  of  course, 
accounts  for  all  the  relevant  data  in  the  simplest 
manner. 

It  is,  indeed,  manifest  that  the  levirate- 
polygyny  rule  stands  to  the  exogamous  principle 
somewhat  in  the  relation  of  a  part  to  the  whole 
or  of  a  special  instance  to  a  broader  principle. 
Assume  exogamous  divisions,  and  my  wife 
becomes  ipso  facto  my  brother's  potential  wife 
while  my  wife's  sisters  are  my  and  my  brothers' 
potential  wives  even  though  marriage  be  never 
actually  consummated  except  monogamously. 
Incidentally,  it  is  by  no  means  certain  that  in 
reported  cases  the  levirate  is  limited  to  the  real 
brother  or  the  multiple  sister  marriages  to  own 
sisters;  indeed,  in  some  cases  the  reverse  is 
stated,  cousins  or  members  of  the  same  clan  or 
gens  being  expressly  included.  With  the  dual 
organization  the  case  is  especially  clear.  The 
kinship  terms  then  appear  simply  as  status 
names.  I  am  brother  to  those  who  are  potential 
husbands  of  the  same  group  of  women  and  since 
all  of  us  males  occupy  this  common  status  there 
is  correlatively  a  single  term  by  which  all  of  us 
[147] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

are  called  by  our  children.  The  status  assump- 
tion is  supported  by  such  facts  as  the  Gilyak 
rule  by  which  men  of  a  gens  must  take  wives 
from  a  particular  gens  and  where  the  gentes  as 
units  are  regarded  as  standing  to  each  other  in 
the  relationship  of  father-in-law  and  son-in-law >^ 

In  short,  where  the  levirate-polygyny  usages 
coexist  with  exogamy,  it  would  be  rash  to  derive 
a  merging  and  bifurcate  nomenclature  from  the 
former  rather  than  from  the  latter. 

Still  another  objection  is  implied  in  Dr. 
Sapir's  own  statement  of  the  case.  It  is  not 
necessary  for  the  natives  to  look  at  the  levirate 
from  the  point  of  view  hitherto  assumed.  In- 
stead of  defining  the  paternal  uncle  in  terms  of 
his  potential  fatherhood,  they  may  have  a  word 
distinct  from  that  for  father  to  designate  the 
stepfather  and  the  paternal  uncle.  Dr.  Sapir 
cites  the  Upper  Chinook  by  way  of  illustration. 
In  other  words,  the  action  of  the  levirate  is 
equivocal.  It  may  affect  nomenclature  so  as  to 
produce  the  semblance  of  the  Dakota  principle, 
but  it  may  also  produce  quite  different  results. 
It  may  also  fail  to  affect  terminology  at  all,  as 
apparently  is  the  case  in  Semitic  languages  with 
their  descriptive  nomenclature. 

In  this  connection  a  qualification  must  be  made 
that  applies  equally  to  the  exogamy  hypothesis. 
[148] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

Though  the  ultimate  cause  of  a  terminological 
feature  be  the  levirate,  the  immediate  cause 
in  a  given  instance  may  well  be  an  historico- 
geographical  one.  If  the  Chinook  nomen- 
clature is  differently  affected  by  the  levirate 
from  that  of  the  Yahi,  the  proximate  reason 
may  be  simply  the  fact  that  the  Chinook 
did  not  come  into  contact  with  the  same 
peoples  as  the  Yahi  and  thus  had  no  chance 
to  borrow  their  nomenclature.  In  other  words, 
admitting  an  influence  of  the  levirate,  it  is  not 
necessary  to  assume  that  it  has  repeatedly 
produced  the  same  terminological  effects  inde- 
pendently. 

I  know  of  at  least  one  instance  in  which  the 
hypothesis  advanced  by  Dr.  Sapir  seems  definitely 
excluded,  leaving  exogamy  in  the  field  as  the 
efficient  cause.  The  Hopi  system  conforms  to 
the  essentials  of  the  Dakota  type,  but  neither 
the  levirate  nor  the  marriage  with  two  sisters  is 
in  vogue.  It  cannot  be  argued  that  the  Dakota 
features  were  borrowed  from  some  other  South- 
western tribe  possessing  these  usages,  first, 
because  the  Dakota  features  are  far  more  highly 
developed  among  the  Hopi  than  among  other 
Pueblo  Indians;  secondly,  because  it  is  very 
doubtful  whether  the  practices  in  question  occur 
among  other  Pueblo  tribes.^^ 
1 149] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

In  justice  to  Dr.  Sapir  it  must  be  pointed  out 
that  he  does  not  advance  his  hypothesis  as  a 
general  interpretation  of  the  phenomena.  As 
he  suggests,  it  is  most  serviceable  where  the 
exogamous  factor  does  not  occur,  or,  as  I  should 
add,  where  diffusion  of  features  from  a  system 
affected  by  exogamy  seems  improbable.  I  have 
examined  his  hypothesis  as  if  it  were  designed  to 
account  for  all  the  relevant  phenomena  simply 
in  order  to  bring  out  clearly  its  inferiority  from 
this  point  of  view  to  the  theory  of  exogamy. 

There  are  two  series  of  cases  which  strongly 
corroborate  the  theory  of  the  effect  of  the 
exogamous  organization  on  the  kinship  nomen- 
clature. They  constitute  a  distinct  variant  of 
the  Dakota  principle,  the  deviation  being  in  the 
designation  of  cross-cousins.  While  these  are 
still  differentiated  from  parallel  cousins,  they 
are  not  placed  together  in  a  single  category  but 
are  classed,  one  group  of  cousins  with  the  first 
ascending  and  the  complementary  group  with 
the  first  descending  generation.  In  short,  the 
generation  factor  which  is  fundamental  in  the 
Hawaiian  scheme  and  only  modified  by  dichot- 
omy in  the  usual  type  of  bifurcate  merging 
schemes  is  here  overridden  by  some  other  factor. 
Now  what  is  the  nature  of  this  new  determinant? 
Let  us  look  at  the  facts. 

[150] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

The  Hidatsa  class  the  father's  sister's  son  with 
the  father  and  the  father's  sister's  daughter  and 
all  her  female  descendants  through  females  to 
infinity  with  the  father's  sister;  correlatively, 
the  mother's  brother's  son,  in  the  absence  of 
special  words  for  nephew  or  niece,  is  classed 
with  the  son,  even  by  women.  That  the  Crow 
scheme  is  almost  identical,  is  readily  intelligible 
from  the  historical  relations  of  the  two  tribes, 
who  speak  very  similar  languages  of  the  Siouan 
stock.  But  the  essentials  of  the  classification 
reappear  among  the  geographically,  linguisti- 
cally, and  culturally  remote  Hopi,  with  sugges- 
tions of  similar  features  among  the  Tlingit  and 
even  in  Melanesia.  We  are  again  confronted 
with  a  puzzling  problem  of  distribution. 

An  analysis  of  the  Hidatsa  data  clarifies  the 
situation.  According  to  the  statements  of  the 
natives  themselves,  the  term  'father'  is  applied 
to  any  father's  clansman  irrespective  of  age  and 
would  accordingly  include  the  father's  sister's 
son.  This  suggests  that  the  clue  to  the  entire 
situation  may  lie  in  the  clan  feature.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  we  find  the  daughter  of  the  father's 
sister's  son  is  not  classed  with  the  daughter  of 
the  father's  sister's  daughter.  The  only  difference 
that  can  be  connected  with  this  distinction  is 
that  in  clan  membership:  the  former  relative, 
1 151] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

owing  to  the  exogamous  clan  system,  can  never, 
and  the  latter  relative  always  must,  belong  to  the 
father's  sister's  clan.  Hence  the  former,  being 
a  father's  sister's  son's,  i.e.,  a  'father's',  daughter, 
becomes  in  Hidatsa  speech  a  sister,  while  the 
latter  is  designated  by  a  word  translated  'pater- 
nal aunt'  but  really  embracing  likewise  all  the 
lower  generations  of  females  in  the  paternal 
clan.  That  we  are  dealing  with  the  clan  factor, 
is  corroborated  by  the  fact  that  in  Hidatsa 
terminology  the  mother's  brother,  instead  of 
being  designated  by  a  specific  word,  is  classed 
with  the  elder  brother,  a  term  also  applied  to 
the  mother's  mother's  brother.  The  last- 
mentioned  kinsman  may  be  similarly  addressed 
in  Hopi. 

Powerful  corroborative  evidence  is  supplied 
by  a  second  series  of  facts.  Among  the  Omaha, 
where  descent  is  reckoned  in  the  paternal  line, 
the  father's  sister's  daughter  is  no  longer  classed 
with  the  father's  sister  but  with  the  sister's 
daughter.  These,  it  may  be  noted  incidentally, 
would  belong  to  the  same  division  if  the  moieties 
of  the  Omaha  were  at  one  time  exogamous,  for 
which  there  is  some  evidence.  But  the  essential 
point  is  that  here  the  mother's  brother's  son 
and  all  his  male  descendants  through  males  are 
indiscriminately  classed  with  the  maternal 
[152] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

uncle.  It  is  clear  that  they  are  all  members  of 
the  same  gens,  and  corresponding  to  our  Hidatsa 
experiment  we  find  that  as  soon  as  we  pass  out- 
side the  gens  the  terminology  changes:  my 
mother's  brother's  daughter's  son  is  not  my 
maternal  uncle  but  my  brother  since  his  mother, 
the  uncle's  daughter,  is  called  'mother', 
belonging  as  she  must  to  my  mother's  gens.*' 
The  Omaha  phenomena  are  absolutely  paral- 
leled not  only  among  other  Southern  Siouans  but 
also  among  a  number  of  Algonquians,  viz.,  the 
Miami,  Sauk  and  Fox,  Kickapoo,  Menomini  and 
Shawnee.  The  area  covered  is  an  absolutely 
continuous  one,  and  it  is  impossible  not  to  ex- 
plain such  adistribution  by  diffusion.  This  conclu- 
sion is  accentuated  by  the  fact  that  the  Ojibwa, 
though  an  Algonquian  people  with  a  gentile 
system,  do  not  share  the  Omaha  variant  of  the 
Dakota  scheme  but  conform  to  the  more  usual 
type  found  among  their  neighbors,  the  Dakota. 
The  mere  presence  of  a  gentile  organization, 
though  doubtless  a  favorable  basis  for  the 
development  or  adoption  of  the  Omaha  scheme, 
is  not  the  only  determining  condition;  the 
presence  of  terminological  features  in  a  particular 
tribe  is  also  a  function  of  its  geographical  posi- 
tion or  historical  connections.  This  does  not 
interfere  with  the  ultimate  interpretation  of 
[153] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

such  features  but  it  shows  the  necessity  of 
taking  into  account  the  geographico-historical 
situation.  At  present  I  cannot  suggest  what 
may  have  been  the  differential  condition  that 
produced  the  Hidatsa  variant  among  some 
tribes  with  a  clan  system  but  not  among  the 
Iroquois;  or  the  Omaha  variant  among  certain 
Algonquian  tribes  but  not  the  Ojibwa. 

The  exogamy  hypothesis,  with  special  reference, 
to  the  phenomena  just  mentioned,  has  recently 
been  discussed  by  Professor  Kroeber."*'  He 
accepts  the  empirical  correlation  between  exog- 
amy and  the  merging  of  lineal  and  collateral 
kin  with  bifurcation  of  the  parental  lines,  but 
interprets  it  as  due  rather  to  the  differentiation 
of  male  and  female  lines  of  descent  than  to 
exogamy  itself,  which  latter  he  regards  as 
'perhaps  a  common  but  not  necessary  develop- 
ment, and  an  overlying  development  of  the 
former'.  "The  basic  condition,"  argues  Dr. 
Kroeber,  "would  be  that  in  which  a  woman  would 
be  felt  to  be  a  very  different  thing  from  a  man  in 
relationship — less  perhaps  as  an  existing  indi- 
vidual than  as  a  factor  in  the  relations  of  other 
people.  Once  this  point  of  view  prevailed, 
cross-cousins  would  necessarily  be  felt  to  be 
something  very  different  from  parallel  cousins, 
and  cross-uncles  and  aunts  from  parallel  ones; 
[154] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

and  the  distinction  would  find  expression  in 
nomenclature."  Accentuation  of  the  male  and 
female  lines  of  descent  with  greater  weighting  of 
the  one  would  possibly  lead  to  clan  groups. 

As  a  theory  of  the  origin  of  exogamous  groups 
I  have  no  particular  objection  to  offer  to  the 
foregoing.  For  reasons  to  be  stated  below  (p. 
163)  I  heartily  concur  in  the  assumption  that 
the  family,  in  America  at  all  events,  preceded 
the  clan  or  gens.  If  I  understand  him  correctly, 
Dr.  Kroeber's  remarks  merely  paraphrase  the 
fact  of  this  sequence.  But  I  do  not  see  that 
acceptance  of  his  view  on  this  point  involves  a 
rejection  of  the  influence  of  the  clan  when  that 
has  once  developed.  Of  course  it  is  not  directly 
exogamy  that  is  expressed  but  the  alignment  in 
groups  which  exogamy  brings  about.  On  Dr. 
Kroeber's  assumption  it  is  unintelligible  why 
father's  sister's  son  and  mother's  brother's  son 
should  so  frequently  be  classed  together  since 
the  one  is  clearly  related  through  the  father,  the 
other  through  the  mother.  We  can  hardly 
credit  the  native  mind  with  a  tendency  to  alge- 
braic equalization  of  a  plus  and  minus  quantity 
by  which  the  product  of  a  male  and  a  female 
relationship  shall  be  standardized  by  a  common 
designation.  Generally  speaking,  Dr.  Kroeber's 
factors  explain  only  bifurcation  but  not  merging. 
[155] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

The  fact  that  even  remote  father's  cousins  are 
grouped  with  the  father  is  what  the  clan  or 
gentile  hypothesis  explains  over  and  above  the 
dichotomy  of  relatives.  That  such  merging 
occurs  among  tribes  with  definite  exogamous 
groups,  and  generally  not  in  loosely  organized 
ones,  can  hardly  be  an  accident.  Dr.  Kroeber's 
case  is,  however,  weakest  as  regards  the  Hidatsa 
and  Omaha  variants  of  the  Dakota  scheme.  If 
'unilaterality  of  descent'  rather  than  clan  or 
gentile  affiliation  is  the  determinant  here,  then 
why  is  the  Hidatsa  variant  uniformly  found 
among  matrilineal  tribes  and  the  Omaha  variant 
uniformly  with  a  gentile  system?  In  other 
words,  why  does  not  the  Omaha  call  his  father's 
sister's  son  'father'  and  his  father's  sister's 
daughter  'aunt'?  The  cross-cousins  in  question 
are  as  clearly  related  to  me  through  the  father 
among  the  Omaha  as  among  the  Hidatsa,  but  in 
the  former  case  they  are  not,  and  in  the  latter 
they  necessarily  are,  my  father's  clansfolk. 
Similarly,  the  mother's  brother's  son  and  his 
male  offspring  are  as  emphatically  related  to  me 
through  my  mother  among  the  Hidatsa  as  any- 
where, but  they  are  not  aligned  in  the  same 
social  group  with  one  another  and  they  are  not 
classed  together  in  terminology.  For  the  sake 
of  clearness  I  will,  at  the  risk  of  repetition, 
[156] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

formulate  what  I  consider  the  probable  course 
of  events.  Among  certain  loosely  organized 
tribes  the  bifurcation  of  immediate  kin  evolved, 
as  we  find  it  among  a  number  of  our  Far  Western 
tribes.  This  tendency  was  amplified  and 
became  superseded  by  a  definite  clan  or  gentile 
scheme.  As  this  scheme  developed,  possibly  as 
a  part  of  its  growth,  kinship  terminology  became 
not  only  forked  but  more  inclusive  as  well. 
Finally,  the  fully  established  organization  was 
able,  in  certain  instances  to  exert  the  extreme 
retro-active  influence  on  nomenclature  revealed 
in  the  Hidatsa  and  Omaha  variants. 

In  his  extremely  valuable  paper  on  Miwok 
organization^^  Mr.  Gifford  also  suggests  a  rival 
explanation  in  place  of  exogamy.  The  Miwok 
of  California  are  organized  in  approximately 
exogamous  moieties,  and  their  nomenclature 
bears  some  resemblance  to  that  of  the  Omaha. 
More  particularly  is  the  mother's  brother's  son 
(and  his  male  descendants  through  males?) 
classed  with  the  mother's  brother.  According 
to  Mr.  Gifford,  this  is  due  to  the  custom  of  a 
man  marrying,  either  polygamously  or  after  his 
wife's  decease,  the  daughter  of  his  wife's  brother. 
This  form  of  marriage  is  actually  practised 
among  the  Miwok  in  addition  to  the  more 
generally  diffused  marriage  with  the  mother's 
[157] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

brother's  daughter.  Obviously,  the  facts  of 
terminology  are  consistent  both  with  this  usage 
and  with  the  moiety  principle.  Mr.  Gifford 
objects  that  among  the  Miwok  "there  are  no 
clan  or  moiety  brothers  and  sisters,  all  relation- 
ship being  based  on  blood  and  marriage  ties." 
This,  however,  is  not  the  essential  point.  It 
does  not  matter  whether  the  unrelated  members 
are  called  brother  or  sister  provided  they  are 
aligned  together  in  the  same  social  group;  the 
very  existence  of  such  social  groups  implies  a 
differential  attitude  towards  fellow-members  as 
compared  with  the  rest  of  the  tribe.  That  mere 
affiliation  along  moiety  lines  does  not  solve  all 
the  mysteries  of  Miwok  terminology,  is  quite 
true  since  a  sharp  distinction  is  drawn  between 
the  mother's  brother's  daughter  and  the  father's 
sister's  daughter.  Since  both  these  relatives  are 
eligible  mates  from  the  point  of  view  of  exogamy 
while  as  a  matter  of  fact  marriage  with  the 
paternal  aunt's  daughter  is  prohibited,  Mr. 
Gifford's  objection  seems  to  be  sustained.  That 
is  to  say,  here  the  social  organization  explains 
the  classing  together  of  certain  relatives  but  not 
the  exclusion  of  certain  other  relatives,  while 
the  specific  marriage  regulations  of  the  tribe  do 
account  for  this  phenomenon.  But  on  the  other 
hand,  the  marriage  rules  fail  where  the  moiety 
[158] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

hypothesis  succeeds.  Why  are  the  mother's 
younger  sister,  who  cannot  be  married,  and  the 
father's  brother's  wife  classed  with  the  marriage- 
able cross-cousin  and  the  wife's  brother's 
daughter  unless  it  is  because  they  are  all  mem- 
bers of  the  same  moiety? 

So  far  as  the  merging  of  a  maternal  uncle's  male 
descendants  through  males  with  the  uncle  himself 
is  concerned,  I  do  not  see  how  any  marriage  rule 
would  directly  explain  the  extension  of  the  term 
ad  infinitum  while  moiety  alignment  at  once 
renders  it  intelligible.  An  advantage  which  the 
exogamous  principle  enjoys  over  every  special 
marriage  rule  is  the  universality  of  its  sway 
over  the  population.  An  individual's  wife  may 
not  have  a  brother  and  her  brother  may  not 
have  a  daughter  for  the  husband  to  marry,  but 
where  exogamous  groups  exist  every  tribesman 
is  by  birth  a  member  of  a  particular  group. 

To  the  subject  of  specific  marriage  rules  I 
shall  have  to  revert  below.  My  position  as  to 
the  Miwok  nomenclature  is  that  special  regula- 
tions undoubtedly  account  for  some  of  its 
features  while  the  dual  organization  successfully 
explains  others  and  more  particularly  the  Omaha 
variant  of  the  Dakota  principle. 

We  may  sum  up  our  discussion  of  the  Dakota 
principle  with  the  statement  that  its  distribu- 
[159] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

tlon,  coupled  as  it  is  with  exogamous  groups, 
supports  the  theory  of  an  organic  connection 
between  the  two  phenomena.  On  the  question 
which  I  have  hitherto  shelved,  viz.,  whether  it 
is  exogamy  in  any  form  or  more  particularly  the 
dual  organization  that  gave  rise  to  the  features 
under  discussion,  I  am  at  present  unable  to 
reach  a  definite  decision.  Though  the  distribu- 
tion of  the  moiety  is  far  more  restricted  than 
that  of  exogamous  groups  generally,  there  is  no 
doubt  that  not  a  few  elements  of  the  Dakota 
principle  are  most  readily  derived  from  a  dual 
organization.  It  remains  for  the  future  to 
determine  what  is  the  relative  part  taken  by 
the  multiple  kin  group  and  the  moiety  organiza- 
tion in  fashioning  kinship  nomenclature. 

Before  leaving  the  Dakota  principle,  it  seems 
desirable  to  allude  to  two  important  theoretical 
problems  with  which  it  seems  connected — its 
relations  to  the  Hawaiian  principle  and  its  bearing 
on  the  antiquity  of  the  clan  organization.  The 
Dakota  scheme  in  its  more  usual  form  may  be 
logically  regarded  as  merely  a  complication  of 
the  simpler  Hawaiian  one.  As  Morgan  pointed 
out,  the  two  coincide  in  practically  half  of  all 
the  relationships.  Inspired  no  doubt  by  the 
general  trend  of  evolutionary  thought  in  his 
day,  Morgan  converted  the  logical  connection 
[i6o] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

into  an  historical  sequence  and  assumed  the 
priority  of  the  simpler  system.  He  indicated 
how,  if  grafted  on  the  Hawaiian  scheme,  the 
clan  or  gentile  organization  would  transform  it 
into  the  Dakota  type.  It  does  not  seem  to  have 
occurred  to  him  that  the  evolution  might  have 
taken  place  in  the  reverse  direction.  Develop- 
ment, as  shown  precisely  by  linguistic  phenom- 
ena, such  as  the  history  of  the  English  language 
— and  kinship  terms,  no  matter  what  else  they 
may  be,  are  elements  of  human  speech —  is  not 
always  from  the  simple  to  the  complex.  Mor- 
gan's belief  was  influenced  by  the  view  that 
humanity  started  their  social  existence  at  an 
extremely  low  level,  for  which  opinion  he  found 
support  in  the  social  conditions  he  inferred  from 
the  Hawaiian  schedules.  These,  he  argued, 
suggest  brother-sister  marriage  since  such  mar- 
riages would  explain  the  use  of  the  same  term 
for  mother's  brother  and  father.  Such  unions 
certainly  would  produce  the  observed  termi- 
nology but  Morgan  failed  to  consider  that  an 
alternative  explanation  was  at  hand.  His 
fundamental  error  lay  in  attaching  to  the 
primary  kinship  terms  of  the  Hawaiians  and 
other  peoples  the  notion  of  actual  cohabitation. 
From  this  starting-point  he  consistently  argued 
that  all  men  addressed  as  father  had  actual 
[i6i] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

access  to  the  speaker's  mother.  As  Cunow  has 
well  shown ,^2  there  is  not  a  tittle  of  evidence 
that  this  represents  the  native  point  of  view, 
from  which  the  term  'father'  merely  indicates 
tribal  status  with  reference  to  the  speaker. 
When  we  have  once  recognized  this  fact,  there  is 
nothing  so  intrinsically  primitive  in  the  Hawai- 
ian scheme  of  ranging  kin  as  to  demonstrate 
hoary  antiquity. 

All  empirical  considerations,  indeed,  point  in 
the  opposite  direction.  For  one  thing,  all  the 
peoples  whose  systems  are  characterized  by  the 
Hawaiian  feature  rank  relatively  high  in  the 
scale  of  civilization.  No  one  would  dream  of 
placing  the  Maori  culture  below  that  of,  say, 
the  Fijians.  Secondly,  we  have  the  most  power- 
ful circumstantial  evidence  from  distinct  quarters 
of  the  globe  to  prove  that  Hawaiian  features 
develop  secondarily  within  the  Dakota  scheme. 
Thus,  among  some  Iroquois  tribes,  the  tendency 
has  developed  to  call  the  father's  as  well  as  the 
mother's  sister  'mother'.  The  Crow  differ 
from  all  other  Siouan  tribes,  even  from  their 
closest  relatives,  the  Hidatsa,  in  similarly  extend- 
ing the  word  for  mother  in  direct  address. 
Among  the  Torres  Straits  Islanders  a  corre- 
sponding change  of  usage  was  recorded  by  Dr. 
Rivers,^  and  similar  developments  seem  to  have 
1 162] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

occurred  among  the  Gilyak.^^  Relevant  data 
from  West  Africa  have  already  been  cited  in 
another  connection. 

All  this  does  not  prove  that  as  a  general 
proposition  Morgan's  sequence  must  simply  be 
inverted.  For  this  there  is  no  evidence  in  North 
America,  where  complete  Hawaiian  schemes,  or 
even  approximations  thereto,  are  lacking.  But 
the  data  at  our  disposal  do  indicate  that  in  so 
far  as  a  tendency  toward  Hawaiian  elements 
appears  it  is  often  due  to  secondary  development. 

To  turn  next  to  the  problem  of  the  exogamous 
kin  group.  Some  theoretical  writers  have 
assumed  the  priority  of  the  clan  or  gens  to  the 
'loose',  i.  e.,  clanless  or  non-gentile,  organiza- 
tion in  which  the  family  and  local  group  usually 
form  the  only  important  social  units.  To  sup- 
port such  a  view  appeals  have  sometimes  been 
made  to  kinship  nomenclatures.  So  far  as 
North  America  is  concerned,  this  argument  is 
certainly  without  foundation.  It  was  Dr. 
Swan  ton,  I  think,  who  first  showed  that  in 
North  America  the  exogamous  system  is  found 
precisely  among  the  more  highly  cultured  tribes 
while  generally  speaking  it  is  lacking  among  the 
more  primitive  peoples.  Now  as  I  have  shown 
above,  exogamy  in  North  America  largely  goes 
hand  in  hand  with  the  Dakota  principle.  It  is 
[163I 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

therefore  rather  remarkable  that  the  more 
primitive  clanless  North  American  tribes  of  the 
Plateau  and  neighboring  regions  also  lack  the 
Dakota  principle.  The  suggestion  sometimes 
offered  that  a  clan  or  gentile  system  has  once 
existed  and  simply  eluded  the  field  worker's 
scrutiny  on  account  of  the  degeneration  of 
aboriginal  life  under  modern  conditions  thus 
breaks  down.  We  cannot  argue  positively  that 
where  the  Dakota  principle  reigns  exogamy 
must  necessarily  have  occurred,  because  the 
correlation,  while  high,  is  not  perfect  and  because 
the  principle  may  have  been  borrowed  without 
the  social  organization.  But  an  exogamous 
organization  is  so  frequently  associated  with  the 
Dakota  principle  and  there  is  so  little  reason  for 
a  change  of  kinship  terminology  provided  the 
native  language  is  preserved  that  the  total  lack 
of  Dakota  features  over  a  wide  area  may  be 
regarded  as  exceedingly  strong  evidence  against 
the  former  or  at  least  ancient  existence  of 
exogamous  groups. 

Supposed  Features  of  '  Classificatory'  Systems. 
Under  the  misnomer  'classificatory  systems' 
some  writers  have  included  consideration  of  the 
principle  of  differentiating  elder  and  younger 
brothers  and  sisters.  The  distribution  of  this 
distinction  is  simply  staggering  when  one 
[164] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

attempts  to  trace  it  more  or  less  systematically. 
Of  North  American  systems,  I  can  offhand 
recall  only  two,  the  Pawnee  and  Kiowa,  in 
which  it  does  not  appear.  We  find  it  in  associa- 
tion with  the  Hungarian  and  Chukchee  termi- 
nologies, both  of  which  lack  the  Dakota  principle, 
and  it  occurs  with  the  Hawaiian  no  less  than  the 
vast  majority  of  bifurcate  systems.  So  far  as  I 
know,  the  only  one  who  has  offered  any  explana- 
tion of  the  phenomenon  is  Dr.  Rivers,  who  once 
connected  it  with  a  difference  in  the  time  of 
tribal  initiation.^^  But  since  there  are  many 
peoples,  e.  g.,  in  North  America,  who  do  not 
practise  any  form  of  tribal  initiation,  the 
hypothesis  hardly  seems  tenable  and  we  must 
rest  content  to  accept  the  facts  of  distri- 
bution. 

Another  feature  that  is  often  erroneously 
treated  in  association  with  the  Dakota  principle 
is  that  of  reciprocity,  which  has  already  been 
referred  to  as  the  usage  of  designating  a  pair  of 
relatives,  more  particularly  two  belonging  to 
different  generations,  by  a  single  term.  Thus, 
the  Shoshone  call  the  mother's  father  and  the 
daughter's  son  (man  speaking)  by  one  term. 
Such  usage  would  be  manifestly  opposed  to  the 
Hawaiian  principle  with  which  it  does  not  seem 
to  be  associated.  It  is  found  in  connection  with 
[165] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

the  Dakota  scheme  in  Melanesia  and  particu- 
larly in  Australia,  but  is  markedly  absent  from 
the  merging  systems  of  North  America.  Since 
here  it  is  highly  developed  where  the  Dakota 
principle  does  not  occur,  it  cannot  be  regarded 
as  an  essential  element  of  'classificatory  sys- 
tems'. The  question  remains  how  we  are  to 
account  for  the  facts  of  distribution.  Australian 
data  forcibly  suggest  that,  there  at  least,  the 
reciprocal  feature  is  a  reflection  of  social  organ- 
ization. Grandparents  and  grandchildren,  by 
the  curious  rule  of  descent  that  regulates 
affiliation  with  the  matrimonial  classes  of  the 
area,  are  necessarily  in  the  same  class,  i.  e.,  a 
father's  father  and  a  son's  son  or  a  mother's 
father  and  a  daughter's  son  (man  speaking)  are 
fellow-members  of  a  class.  The  fit  seems  too 
close  to  admit  of  an  accidental  association.  But 
when  we  turn  to  the  North  American  region  of 
reciprocal  features  the  interpretation  no  longer 
holds  since  no  vestige  is  found  there  of  any 
institution  that  might  align  the  relatives  under 
discussion  in  a  common  group.  The  inference  is 
that  there  has  been  convergent  development, 
and  perhaps  the  most  plausible  explanation  of 
the  North  American  terms  is  that  they  are 
designations  not  so  much  of  the  relatives  as  of 
the  relationship  itself.^® 

[166] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

If  we  cannot  give  more  than  this  general  inter- 
pretation of  the  reciprocal  feature  as  found  in 
North  America,  we  can  on  the  other  hand  show 
quite  definitely  that  its  occurrence  is  a  function 
of  geographical  position  there.  The  practical 
absence  of  this  trait  in  the  immense  region 
particularly  dealt  with  by  Morgan  is  as  remark- 
able as  its  spread  over  a  practically  continuous 
region  in  the  Far  West,  among  the  Lillooet, 
Spokane,  Kootenai,  Nez  Perce,  Wishram,  Ta- 
kelma,  and  various  Californian  and  Shoshonean 
Plateau  populations,  as  well  as  in  a  considerable 
number  of  Southwestern  tribes.  The  Pacific, 
Plateau  and  Southwestern  regions  obviously 
define  the  distribution  of  reciprocity  in  North 
America,  which  thus  becomes  intelligible  only 
through  diffusion. 

Various  Features.  The  principles  of  kinship 
nomenclature  that  have  been  treated  hitherto 
are  far  from  exhausting  the  variety  found  in  a 
survey  of  the  world.  A  very  odd  mode  of 
addressing  relatives  after  presentation  of  a  gift 
has  been  mentioned  for  the  Masai  (p.  104),  and 
there  is  little  doubt  that  more  extensive  knowl- 
edge will  reveal  equally  quaint  notions  else- 
where. Here  I  merely  wish  to  enumerate  a  few 
examples  from  the  particular  point  of  view 
assumed  in  this  chapter. 

[167] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  while  in  Australia 
the  principle  of  bifurcation  is  consistently  carried 
to  the  grandparental  stratum  of  society  in 
conjunction  with  the  reciprocal  feature,  the 
North  American  region  in  which  the  Dakota 
principle  is  especially  prominent  lacks  the  dis- 
tinction between  mother's  and  father's  parents, 
so  that  Morgan  does  not  even  dedicate  special 
columns  to  these  relationships  in  his  elaborate 
schedules  and  notes  the  discrimination  with 
some  surprise  for  the  Spokane."  This  feature  is 
nevertheless  widely  spread  in  the  Far  West, 
coinciding  to  some  extent  with  that  of  reci- 
procity. We  find  it  among  Salish  and  Sho- 
shonean  tribes,  in  California,  among  the  Takelma 
and  Wishram,  and  to  some  extent  in  the  South- 
west. Both  the  positive  and  the  negative  facts  of 
distribution  indicate  the  occurrence  of  diffusion. 

The  change  of  terms  after  the  death  of  a 
connecting  or  other  relative  is  another  feature  of 
considerable  interest.  Thus,  the  Kawaiisu  of 
California  address  the  father  as  muwuni,  but  by 
the  quite  distinct  term  kuguni  after  the  loss  of 
a  child. ^^  Again,  the  Kootenai  have  one  word 
for  the  father-in-law  before  and  another  after 
the  wife's  or  husband's  death.  This  peculiarity 
appears  also  among  Californian  tribes,  the 
Chinook,  Quileute,  and  several  Salish  tribes. 
[i68] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

This  distribution  again  demonstrates  diffusion 
from  a  common  center.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
probably  even  higher  development  of  post- 
mortem nomenclature  among  the  Timucua  of 
Florida ^^  cannot  be  ascribed,  in  the  present 
state  of  our  knowledge,  to  anything  but  inde- 
pendent origin,  though  we  are  not  in  a  position 
to  state  what  common  cause,  lacking  in  the  inter- 
vening area,  produced  the  common  effect  in  the 
southeastern  United  States  and  in  the  remote 
regions  of  the  Far  West. 

I  will  only  call  attention  to  one  other  kinship 
usage  of  more  general  interest,  that  embraced  in 
the  term  'teknonymy',  the  custom  of  denoting 
an  individual  in  terms  of  his  relationship  to  a 
child,  viz.,  'father  of  Mary',  'grandmother  of 
John'.  This  practice  exists  in  South  Africa  and 
India,^  in  Melanesia,^^  and  in  the  Pueblo  area 
and  on  the  Northwest  coast  of  North  America.^^ 
Tylor  connected  it  with  the  custom  of  the 
husband's  residence  with  his  wife's  kin,  of  the 
father's  assertion  of  his  paternity  and  his  ulti- 
mate recognition  as  more  than  a  stranger  by  the 
wife's  family  with  whom  a  condition  of  cere- 
monial avoidance  obtains.  However,  it  should 
be  noted  that  among  the  Zuni  and  the  Hopi, 
though  the  husband  lives  with  his  wife's  people, 
there  is  no  parent-in-law  taboo,  and  the  wife  is 
[169] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

as  often  referred  to  teknonymously  as  the  hus- 
band. Thus,  my  Hopi  interpreter  always  spoke 
to  me  of  his  wife  as  'Herman's  mother'.  Tylor's 
explanation  is  accordingly  inadequate  and  would 
seem  to  require  at  least  amplification.  But 
whatever  result  a  systematic  survey  of  the 
subject  may  lead  to,  it  is  certain  that  the  effect 
of  diffusion  will  have  to  be  taken  into  account. 
It  is  inconceivable,  e.  g.,  that  the  practice 
originated  independently  among  tribes  so  geo- 
graphically situated  and  so  intimately  related 
in  culture  as  the  Zufii  and  Hopi. 

Special  Forms  of  Marriage  and  Social  Customs. 
There  can  be  little  doubt  that  a  well-established 
marriage  rule  often  finds  expression  in  nomen- 
clature. Even  the  exogamous  principle  can  be 
brought  under  this  head  since  it  expresses  the 
potential  matrimonial  status  of  members  of  the 
community.  In  a  dual  organization  my  'father' 
is  one  who  potentially,  if  not  actually,  is  a  mate 
of  women  of  my  mother's  group,  while  a  'moth- 
er's brother'  is  one  who  can  under  no  condition 
occupy  that  status. 

Of  the  specific  forms  of  marriage  the  levirate 
has  already  been  considered  and  the  cross-cousin 
marriage  briefly  mentioned.  Dr.  Rivers  has 
demonstrated  the  close  dependence  of  nomen- 
clature on  the  latter  practice  in  Melanesia.  Here 
[170I 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

the  custom  itself  is  found  in  full  swing,  and  it 
would  be  unreasonable  to  deny  that  the  termi- 
nology had  its  origin  in  this  usage  even  in  parts  of 
Melanesia  where  it  cannot  be  observed.  This 
does  not  mean  that  cross-cousin  marriage  neces- 
sarily obtained  throughout  the  range  of  distribu- 
tion of  the  corresponding  terminology  but  that 
the  terminology  spread  from  a  center  where  it 
reflected  the  social  institution.  Thus,  in  Gua- 
dalcanar  the  cross-cousin  marriage  still  persists 
and  we  find  cross-cousins,  brothers-in-law  and 
sisters-in-law  comprised  under  a  single  appella- 
tion. In  Anaiteum,  cross-cousins  of  opposite  sex 
address  one  another  by  the  terms  used  for  hus- 
band and  wife.®^  It  seems  to  me  methodologically 
quite  justifiable  to  interpret  similar  features  in 
neighboring  islands  as  having  their  ultimate  ori- 
gin in  cross-cousin  marriage.  But  the  argument 
fails  where  similar  connotations  of  terms  occur 
without  evidence  of  the  marriage  rule  unless  it 
can  be  demonstrated  that  no  other  cause  could 
have  produced  the  result.  Thus,  I  must  consider 
unsuccessful  Dr.  Rivers'  attempt  to  deduce, 
though  with  qualifications,  the  former  existence 
of  the  institution  in  question  from  the  system  of 
the  Dakota  Indians.^*  The  classification  of 
brothers-in-law  with  cross-cousins  might  be 
simply  a  reflection  of  the  dual  organization,  by 
[171] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

which  these  relatives  would  fall  within  the  same 
group ;  or,  to  put  it  differently,  if  the  term  cross- 
cousin  is  given  the  wide  significance  with  which 
we  are  familiar  in  primitive  systems,  so  as  to 
include  members  of  the  opposite  moiety  and  one's 
own  generation,  a  man's  brothers-in-law  are 
necessarily  members  of  the  cross-cousin  class. 
The  superiority  of  the  moiety  hypothesis  in  this 
instance  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  dual  organiza- 
tion occurs  among  several  contiguous  and  re- 
lated tribes  while  the  cross-cousin  marriage  is 
extremely  rare  in  North  America  and  its  highest 
development  occurs  among  remote  peoples  of  the 
Pacific  region.  Regarding  special  forms  of  mar- 
riage, it  is  rather  important  to  ascertain  whether 
the  terms  used  by  our  authorities  are  to  be  inter- 
preted in  our  own  or  in  the  more  inclusive  prim- 
itive sense.  For  example,  Tylor  reduced  the  in- 
stitution of  cross-cousin  marriage  to  the  principle 
of  exogamous  moieties  by  assuming  the  wider 
significance,^  As  Dr.  Rivers  points  out,®*  the  two 
rules  are  not  identical  if  marriage  is  prescribed 
with  the  own  daughter  of  the  own  mother's 
brother.  In  that  case,  the  moiety  rule  is  only 
a  larger  framework  with  which  the  specific  in- 
stitution is  not  incompatible  but  which  does  not 
determine  cross-cousin  marriage.  Looking  at  the 
matter  chronologically,  I  can  even  conceive  the 
1 172] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

development  of  larger  social  groups  from  such 
specific  marriage  regulations.  If  in  the  absence 
of  an  own  cross-cousin,  a  more  remote  cousin 
comes  to  be  regularly  substituted,  we  should  have 
a  whole  class  of  possible  mates,  of  whom  the  near- 
est cross-cousin  would  be  only  primus  inter  pares. 
It  must  be  understood  that  while  special  mar- 
riage regulations,  like  exogamy,  tend  to  be  mir- 
rored in  nomenclature,  there  is  no  absolute  ne- 
cessity for  this  occurrence.  As  the  New  Mexican 
Tewa  have  exogamous  groups  without  the  Da- 
kota principle,  so  the  Miwok  of  California  have 
the  cross-cousin  marriage  with  little  or  no  indi- 
cation of  it  in  terminology.^^  One  factor  that 
must  always  be  considered  in  this  connection  is 
the  time  element.  A  recently  acquired  custom 
may  not  yet  have  developed  an  appropriate 
nomenclature,  while,  as  Morgan  supposed,  the 
nomenclature  may  survive  after  the  custom  has 
become  obsolete.  That  the  frequency  of  mar- 
riage according  to  a  certain  rule,  and  the  co- 
existence of  other  rules,  possibly  antagonistic 
in  their  effects,  must  have  an  influence,  is  ob- 
vious. As  regards  the  latter  point,  Mr.  Gifford 
shows  that  while  marriage  with  the  cross-cousin 
is  not  suggested  in  Miwok  nomenclature,  mar- 
riage with  the  wife's  brother's  daughter  is  re- 
flected by  twelve  terms. 

[173I 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

Among  the  Thonga  of  South  Africa  several 
interesting  forms  of  preferential  matrimonial 
union  occur.  As  among  the  Miwok,  marriage 
with  the  wife's,  younger  sisters  and  wife's 
brother's  daughter  is  considered  peculiarly- 
appropriate,  and  these  affinities  are  subsumed 
under  a  common  caption.  Levirate  extends 
only  to  the  elder  brother's,  not  to  the 
younger  brother's,  wife,  and  quite  consistently 
these  affinities  are  distinguished  by  distinct 
words.  A  man  may  inherit  his  maternal 
uncle's  wife  and  therefore  classes  her  with 
the  wife.  On  the  other  hand,  logic  does  not 
hold  sway  undisputedly.  A  man  calls  cross- 
cousins  by  the  same  term  as  parallel  cousins 
and  brothers,  yet  it  is  possible  for  a  man  to 
inherit  his  parallel  cousin's,  but  not  his  cross- 
cousin's  (father's  sister's  son's),  wife.  The 
explanation  given  by  Junod  seems  quite  satis- 
factory from  a  comparative  point  of  view.  My 
cross-cousin  cannot  belong  to  my  gens,  my 
parallel  cousin  must  belong  to  it.^^  Since  the 
Thonga  usually  distinguish  marriage  potential- 
ities with  considerable  nicety,  we  may  reason- 
ably infer  that  the  present  terminology  for 
cousins  is  a  recent  innovation,  which  conclusion 
once  more  indicates  the  relatively  late  develop- 
ment of  Hawaiian  features. 
[174] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

A  systematic  comparison  of  the  effect  of 
definite  forms  of  marriage  on  nomenclature,  in 
different  parts  of  the  world  is  highly  desirable. 
When  we  shall  have  examined  how  such  an 
institution  as  the  inheritance  of  a  maternal 
uncle's  wife  affects  the  systems  of  the  Tlingit  of 
northwestern  America,  of  the  Banks  Islands  in 
Melanesia,  and  the  Thonga  of  South  Africa,  and 
know  the  action  of  whatever  coexisting  institu- 
tions may  occur,  we  shall  have  gained  consider- 
ably more  insight  into  a  very  suggestive  problem. 
It  is  fairly  clear  that  a  form  of  marriage  does  not 
determine  nomenclature  univocally,  as  the  facts 
relating  to  the  levirate  indicate.  To  ascertain 
in  how  far  parallelism  actually  occurs,  is  a 
matter  of  great  moment. 

Conclusion.  The  question  with  which  this 
chapter  opens  has  now  received  an  answer. 
Terms  of  relationship  form  a  proper  topic  of 
investigation  for  the  ethnologist,  first  because 
they  are  often  directly  correlated  with  cultural 
phenomena,  such  as  social  usages  regulating 
marriage;  secondly,  because  the  features  of 
kinship  nomenclature  are  an  index  of  tribal 
relationship.  Any  particular  system  is  not  a 
unified  logical  whole  but  a  complex  product  of 
internal  development  and  foreign  connections. 
Accordingly,  its  features  cannot  be  understood 
[175] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

by  themselves  any  more  than  other  cultural 
phenomena,  but  only  in  association  with  con- 
comitant traits  of  the  native  culture  and  in  the 
light  of  a  comparative  survey  of  like  features 
among  neighboring  tribes  and  ultimately  through- 
out the  world.  By  utilizing  our  ethnographical 
knowledge  in  applying  the  method  of  variation 
it  is  possible  to  ascertain,  at  least  to  a  consider- 
able extent,  the  causes,  whether  primary  or 
secondary,  that  have  shaped  a  given  system. 
When,  for  example,  we  endeavor  to  explain 
the  system  of  the  Hopi,  we  can  start  with  the 
fact  that  their  speech  constitutes  them  a  member 
of  the  Shoshonean  family,  i.  e.,  we  can  begin  by 
comparing  Hopi  nomenclature  with  that  of  the 
Paiute,  Paviotso,  Ute  and  Shoshone.  One  fact 
that  strikes  us  here  is  the  great  difference  in  the 
actual  vocables  employed  by  the  Hopi  from 
those  of  their  congeners,  an  observation  which 
by  no  means  extends  to  all  of  their  language. 
Morgan  held  the  view  that  kinship  words  were 
the  most  persistent  elements  of  speech,  but 
however  this  rule  may  work  in  other  stocks,  such 
as  the  Athabaskan,  it  certainly  does  not  obtain 
among  the  Shoshoneans,  nor,  I  may  add,  within 
the  Siouan  family,  where  even  such  closely 
related  languages  as  Crow  and  Hidatsa  reveal 
far  greater  differences  in  the  lexicon  of  relation- 
[176] 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

ships  than  might  be  expected  from  other  voc- 
ables. It  is,  however,  in  the  classification  of 
kin  that  the  distinctiveness  of  the  Hopi  seems 
most  remarkable.  Their  system  is  not  character- 
ized by  the  prominent  features  of  the  Plateau 
Shoshonean  terminologies,  such  as  reciprocity 
and  the  separation  of  paternal  from  maternal 
grandparents.  On  the  other  hand,  they  employ 
the  Dakota  principle  with  the  Hidatsa  variation. 
That  variant  occurs,  so  far  as  we  now  know, 
only  among  peoples  historically  quite  unrelated 
to  the  Hopi  so  that  neither  genetic  connection 
nor  dissemination  accounts  for  the  similarity. 
On  the  other  hand,  all  the  tribes  having  this 
feature  share  exogamous  groups  with  maternal 
descent.  Such  clans  are  characteristic  of  the 
Hopi  also,  but  are  lacking  among  the  other 
Shoshoneans.  We  infer  from  this  that  the 
Hidatsa  variant  among  the  Hopi  is  functionally 
connected  with  their  clan  system.  If  the  neigh- 
boring Zuni  do  not  share  this  characteristic,  a 
possible  explanation  may  be  found  in  the  rela- 
tive weakness  of  the  Zuni  clan  concept,  as 
recently  expounded  by  Professor  Kroeber,  when 
contrasted  with  its  dominance  in  the  social  life 
of  the  Hopi.  In  other  features  the  intimate 
cultural  contact  between  the  Zuiii  and  Hopi  is 
emphatically  apparent.  Probably  for  no  other 
[i77l 


CULTURE  AND  ETHNOLOGY 

tribes  is  there  evidence  for  such  exaggerated 
reliance  on  teknonymy,  while  a  certain  looseness 
in  the  use  of  terms  common  to  both  seems  to  be 
a  general  Southwestern  trait.  The  Hopi  system 
thus  reflects  both  the  social  fabric  of  the  tribe 
and  its  historical  relations, — the  ancient  ones 
reduced  to  a  few  lexical  resemblances,  while  the 
more  complex  tribal  organization  and  recent 
cultural  affiliations  with  the  Southwest,  and 
particularly  with  the  Zuiii,  stand  out  in  bold 
relief. 

A  strictly  similar  inquiry  might  be  made  into 
the  system  of  the  Crow.  Here  the  almost  com- 
plete coincidence  of  certain  very  unusual  features 
with  Hidatsa  ones  bears  eloquent  testimony  to 
the  exceptionally  close  genetic  relationship  of 
the  two  tribes.  Thus,  a  wife  who  has  been 
married  before  is  distinguished  by  a  specific 
word,  and  spouses  generally  refer  to  each  other 
not  by  a  specific  term,  which  seems  restricted  to 
non-vocative  usage,  but  by  a  demonstrative 
expression.  Not  only  is  there  a  confusion  of 
generations  according  to  the  Hidatsa  variant, 
but  the  mother's  brother  is  classed  with  the 
elder  brother  and  so  is  the  mother's  mother's 
brother.  The  last-mentioned  features  are  partly 
found  among  the  Mandan.  All  three  tribes 
differ  from  the  other  Siouans,  and  indeed  from 
1 178] 


CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

all  Other  Plains  Indians  in  having  matrilineal 
descent.  Since  this  is  likewise  the  rule  among 
genetically  unconnected  peoples  sharing  the 
Hidatsa  variant,  we  regard  the  latter  as  func- 
tionally connected  with  the  clan  organization. 
But  there  are  other  traits  in  which  the  termi- 
nology of  the  Crow  differs  from  that  of  their 
nearest  congeners,  and  here  we  must  systemati- 
cally consider  the  possible  effect  of  all  such 
peoples  as  the  Oglala,  or  Blackfoot,  with  whom 
they  have  come  into  contact.  Such  divergence 
may  be  merely  the  effect  of  internal  readjust- 
ment. Thus,  the  Crow  classification  of  the 
father's  sister's  husband  with  the  father  admits 
of  a  plausible  interpretation  as  the  result  of 
another  peculiarity — the  classing  of  the  father's 
sister  with  the  mother  in  direct  address.  Instead 
of  having  two  deviations  from  the  Hidatsa 
norm,  we  should  thus  have  at  bottom  only  one. 
It  is  clear  that  a  far  more  intensive  investiga- 
tion of  kinship  terminologies  must  take  the 
place  of  what  has  hitherto  been  attempted. 
Precisely  the  so-called  minor  peculiarities  of  a 
system  are  important  historically  because  they 
are  the  differential  indications  of  cultural 
contact  with  definite  tribes.  The  phonetic 
inadequacy  of  Morgan's  schedules,  which  has 
been  brought  to  light  by  Dr.  Michelson  and  Mr. 
[179] 


CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

Spier,^  requires  a  reexamination  of  the  entire 
field  covered.  Still  more  important  is  the 
thorough-going  determination  of  the  innumer- 
able systems,  both  in  and  outside  of  America, 
not  touched  upon  by  Morgan  at  all.  Fortunately 
the  work  of  Dr.  Rivers,  Mr.  A.  R.  Brown  and 
Mr.  A.  M.  Hocart  in  England,  of  Dr.  R.  Thurn- 
wald  in  Germany,  of  Dr.  J.  R.  Swan  ton,  Mr. 
Leslie  Spier  and  Mr.  E.  W.  Giflford  in  America 
bids  fair  to  reduce  our  ignorance  of  the  facts. 
With  our  lamentable  absence  of  knowledge  on 
some  of  the  most  essential  points  it  would  be 
rash  indeed  to  claim  for  the  present  sketch  a 
more  than  preliminary  value,  I  am  content 
with  calling  attention  to  the  tremendous  eth- 
nological significance  of  kinship  terminologies, 
with  combating  premature  confidence  in  general- 
izations based  on  sheer  ignorance,  and  above  all 
with  suggesting  that  the  most  rigorous  logical 
formulation  of  problems  is  possible  in  this  too 
long  neglected  domain  of  the  science  of  culture. 


[i8o] 


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IV 

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2.  Tylor,  Edward  B.    Primitive  Culture;    Researches 

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Religion,  Languages,  Art  and  Custom.  2  vols., 
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3.  Hatt,  Gudmund.    Moccasins  and  their  Relation  to 

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7.  FoRRER,  Robert.    Urgeschichte  des  Europaers,  etc., 

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8.  Laufer,   Berthold.     Chinese  Pottery  of  the  Han 

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9.  Obermaier,  Hugo.    Der  Mensch  der  Vorzeit,  p.  337. 

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13.  Tylor,  E.  B.   On  a  Method  of  Investigating  the  De- 

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I.  Morgan,  Lewis  H.    Systems  of  Consanguinity  and 
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2.  Skinner,    Alanson.      Social    Life   and    Ceremonial 

Bundles  of  the  Menomini  Indians,  Anthropological 
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3.  Merker,   M.     Die   Masai,    Ethnographische  Mono- 

graphie  eines  ostafrikanischen  Semitenvolkes,  Ber- 
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4.  RoscoE,  John.    The  Baganda,  an  Account  of  their 

Native  Customs  and  Beliefs,  London,  191 1,  pp.  130- 
132. 

5.  Rivers,  W.  H.  R.    Kin,  Kinship,  Hastings'  Encyclo- 

pcEdia  of  Religion  and  Ethics. 

6.  Morgan,  Lewis  H.   Systems,  p.  12. 

7.  Rivers,  W.  H.  R.    The  History  of  Melanesian  So- 

ciety, 2  vols.,  Cambridge,  1914,  vol.  i,  p.  375  et  seq. 

8.  Morgan,  Lewis  H.  Systems,  pp.  457-461.  Erdland, 

P.  A.  Die  Marshall-Insulaner;  Leben  und  Sitte, 
Sinn  und  Religion  eines  Siidsee-Volkes.  Miinster  in 
W.,  1914,  p.  114  f. 

9.  Rivers,  W.  H.  R.    Kin,  Kinship. 

10.  Morgan,  Lewis  H.   Systems,  pp.  463-466. 

11.  RoscoE,  John.    The  Baganda,  pp.  126-132.   Schinz. 

Deutsch-Siidwest-Afrika,  Oldenburg,  1891,  pp.  175- 
178.  JuNOD,  Henri  A.  The  Life  of  a  South  Afri- 
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237- 

12.  Junod,  Henri  A.   Op.  cit.,  pp.  237  f,  253-257. 

13.  Ellis,  A.  B.    The  Yoruba-speaking  Peoples  of  the 

Slave  Coast  of  West  Africa.  London,  1894,  PP-  ^77~ 
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14.  Thomas,  Northcote  W.    Law  and  Custom  of  the 

Timne  and  other  Tribes,  Anthropological  Report  on 
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CULTURE         AND         ETHNOLOGY 

Sierra  Leone,  London,  1916,  p.  103  et.  seq.,  and 
tables. 

15.  Morgan,  Lewis  H.    Systems,  p.  167  et.  seq.,  also 

author's  notes. 

16.  CuNOW,  H.    Zur  Urgeschichte  der  Ehe  und  Familie 

•  {Ergdnzungshefte  zur  Neuen  Zeii,  Stuttgart,  19 12), 
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17.  Kroeber,  a.  L.    Classificatory  Systems  of  Relation- 

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18.  Morgan,  Lewis  H.   Systems,  pp.  167-169,  205. 

19.  ZioCK,  H.     Dictionary  of  the  English  and  Miskito 

Language.    Herrnhut,  Saxony,  1894. 

20.  Morgan,  Lewis  H.  Systems,  p.  265. 

21.  Martius,  Carl  Friedrich  Phil.  v.    Beitrage   zur 

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23.  Burger,    Otto.     Acht   Lehr-  und  Wanderjahre   in 

Chile.    Leipzig,  1909,  p.  86. 

24.  Medina,  Jos6  Toribio.     Los  Aborijenes  de  Chile. 

Santiago,  1882,  p.  280  f. 

25.  Von  den  Steinen,  Karl.    Diccionario  Sipibo.    Ber- 

lin, 1904. 

26.  Morgan,  Lewis  H.    Systems,  pp.  570-572. 

27.  Rivers,  W.  H.  R.   The  History  of  Melanesian  Society, 

vol.  I,  pp.  266-271. 

28.  Rivers,  W.  H.  R.  Ibid.,  vol.  i,  p.  244. 

29.  Zahn   in    Neuhauss,    R.     Deutsch-Neu-Guinea.     3 

vols.,  Berlin,  191 1,  vol.  3,  p.  304  f. 
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CULTURE         AND  ETHNOLOGY 

30.  Spencer,  Baldwin,  and  Gillen,  F.  J.    The  Native 

Tribes  of  Central  Australia.    London,  1899,  p.  66. 

31.  CzAPLiCKA,  M.  A.    Aboriginal  Siberia,  p.  98  f.    VoN 

Schrenck,  L.  Reisen  und  Forschungen  im  Amur- 
Lande.    St.  Petersburg,  1891,  vol.  3,  p.  236. 

32.  Morgan,  Lewis  H.  Systems,  pp.  387,  508. 

33.  Rivers,  W.  H.  R.    The  Todas.     London,  1906,  pp. 

483-494. 

34.  Seligmann,  C.  G.  and  B.  Z.  The  Veddas.   Cambridge, 

191 1,  p.  64. 

35.  Morgan,  Lewis  H.   League  of  the  Ho-de-no-sau-nee 

or  Iroquois.    New  York,  1904,  Book  i,  Chap.  4. 

36.  SwANTON,  John  R.     Social  Conditions,  Beliefs,  and 

Linguistic  Relationships  of  the  Tlingit  Indians, 
Twenty-sixth  Annual  Report,  Bureau  of  American 
Ethnology,  Washington,  1908,  p.  424. 

37.  CzAPLlCKA,  M.  A.  Aboriginal  Siberia,  p.  60. 

38.  Swanton,  John  R.    Significance  of  the  Terms  for 

Brother  and  Sister  among  Primitive  Peoples,  Jour- 
nal of  the  Washington  Academy  of  Sciences,  191 7, 
pp.  31-35- 

39.  Morgan,  Lewis  H.  Systems,  p.  476. 

40.  Tylor,  E.  B.    Journal  of  the  Anthropological  Insti- 

tute, vol.  18,  1889,  p.  262  f. 

41.  Rivers,  W.  H.  R.    Kinship  and  Social  Organization, 

P-73- 

42.  LowiE,  Robert  H.    Exogamy  and  the  Classificatory 

Systems  of  Relationship,  American  Anthropologist, 
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43.  Boas,  Franz.  Tsimshian  Mythology,  Thirty-first  An- 

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44.  Sapir,  Edward.    Terms  of  Relationship  and  the  Le- 

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pp.  327-337- 

45.  Tylor,  E.  B.    Journal  of  the  Anthropological  Insti- 

tute, vol.  18,  1889,  p.  253. 

46.  Morgan,  Lewis  H.  Systems,  p.  478  f. 

47.  CzAPLiCKA,  M.  A.  Aboriginal  Siberia,  p.  99. 

48.  Kroeber,  a.  L.   Zuni  Kin  and  Clan,  Anthropological 

Papers,  American  Museum  of  Natural  History,  vol. 
18,  1917,  y.  90. 

49.  DoRSEY,  J.  O.    Omaha  Sociology,  Third  Annual  Re- 

port, Bureau  of  American  Ethnology,  Washington, 
1884,  p.  254,    Morgan,  Lewis  H.     Systems,    p. 

335  f- 

50.  Kroeber,  A.  L.  Zuni  Kin  and  Clan,  p.  86  f. 

51.  GiFFORD,  E.  W.    Miwok  Moieties,  University  of  Cali- 

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53.  Rivers,  W.  H.  R.    Kinship,  Reports,  Cambridge  An- 

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54.  Sternberg,  Leo.    The  Turano-Ganowanian  System 

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55.  Rivers,  W.  H.  R.    On  the  Origin  of  the  Classificatory 

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56.  Rivers,  W.  H.  R.    The  History  of  Melanesian  So- 

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57.  Morgan,  Lewis  H.    Systems,  p.  247. 

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58.  GiFFORD,  E.  W.    Tiibatiilabal  and  Kawaiisu  Kinship 

Terms,  University  of  California  Publications  in 
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59.  SwANTON,  John  R.    Terms  of  Relationship  in  Timu- 

cua.  Holmes  Anniversary  Volume,  Washington,  1916, 
pp.  451-463- 

60.  Tylor,  E.  B.    Journal  of  the  Anthropological  Insti- 

tute, vol.  18,  1889,  p.  248. 

61.  Rivers,  W.  H.  R.     The  History  of  Melanesian  So- 

ciety, vol.  2,  p.  336. 

62.  Kroeber,  a.  L.    Zuiii  Kin  and  Clan,  p.  72.    LowiE, 

Robert  H.  Field  Notes.  Krause,  A.  Die  Tlinkit 
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Auftrage  der  Bremer  Geographischen  Gesellschaft, 
1880-1881,  Jena,  1885,  p.  217. 

63.  Rivers,  W.  H.  R.    The  History  of  Melanesian  So- 

ciety, vol.  2,  p.  27. 

64.  Rivers,  W.  H.  R.    Kinship  and  Social  Organization, 

pp.  49-52. 

65.  Tylor,  E.  B.    Journal  of  the  Anthropological  Insti- 

tute, vol.  18,  1889,  p.  264. 

66.  Rivers,  W.  H.  R.     History  of  Melanesian  Society, 

vol.  2,  p.  122. 

67.  Gifford,  E.  W.   Miwok  Moieties,  p.  190. 

68.  JuNOD,  Henri  A.   The  Life  of  a  South  African  Tribe, 

vol.  I,  pp.  247-250. 
69  Michelson,  Truman.  Notes  on  the  Piegan  System 
of  Consanguinity,  Holmes  Anniversary  Volume, 
Washington,  1916,  pp.  320-333.  Spier,  Leslie, 
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[189] 


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